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AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


A CITY IN THE FOREGROUND 
A Novel of Youth 

A picture of Oxford undergraduate life, 
mirroring the characters, the interests, 
the attitudes toward life, of the young 
manhood of England just before the war. 

“One of the best studies of the creative 
temperament, in its unfolding, that has 
occurred in modern English literature.” 

—Boston Transcript. 


E. P. DUTTON ^ COMPANY 






AN UNKNOWN 
QUANTITY 


BY 

GERARD HOPKINS 

• I 

Author op “A City in the Foreground ” 



*‘Women are like tricks by sleight of hand. 
Which to admire we should not understand.** 

—Congreve. 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 





Copyright, 1923 

By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 


AU rights reserved 



a 

Printed in the United States of America 


FES 13 *23 

©C1AG08278 



TO 

THE BELOVED MEMORY 
OF 

Hxttaiarb 

THIS BOOK 
IS 

DEDICATED 


f 



CONTENTS 


Book L Evelyn Dbeams 
Book II. Joyce Acts - 
Book III. Liell Talks 














BOOK I 


EVELYN DREAMS 





















AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY 


THE FIRST CHAPTER 
I 

T he normal man or woman meeting Henry 
Evelyn Rendle for the first time, if that meeting 
had occurred within the limits marked by his twenty- 
fourth and twenty-sixth years, would undoubtedly 
have called him a prig. The fact that his married 
sister Rachel did so call him to his face and, with an 
effect almost more devastating, to the faces of her 
friends, probably accounted for the infrequency of 
their meetings and for the air of constraint with 
which, when the chances of London threw them to¬ 
gether, he received her rather blatant attempts at 
peacemaldng. 

‘‘It’s not,” he frequently protested, “that I mind 
fair criticism, I’m the last person in the world to do 
that, but I want to be criticised for what I am, not 
for what I’m 

The reply was unvarying: “Exactly, my dear, 
just as I said, a prig.” 

“Simply because I’ve got an artistic con¬ 
science-” 

“Artistic fiddlesticks! a prig you are, my dear, 

3 




4 


An Unknown Quantity 

and a prig yon ^11 remain unless I can bully or bore 
you into being sensible. Nobody else’ll have the 
patience to try.” 

It was, perhaps, natural that the claims of blood 
should, on such terms, prove irksome to him, and he 
turned always from these interviews, with a toss of 
his very fair hair and protesting strides of his very 
long legs, to recover among his intimates the sense 
of understanding that he despaired of finding in the 
complacent Philistinism of Belgravia. The change, 
of course, brought instant relief, for those intimates 
of his took Art and the conscience that was supposed 
to accompany it every bit as seriously as he did, and 
though they were fond of applying many terms of 
abuse to individuals who disagreed with them, the 
epithet ‘‘prig” was rarely heard to pass their lips. 

On one subject, that of Success, Evelyn’s con¬ 
science was, at this time, peculiarly sensitive. He 
and his friends were fond of erecting, for contro¬ 
versial purposes, a strange, abstract figure known to 
them as “The Successful. Abtist,” to which they 
attributed, in the lengthy process of furious argu¬ 
ments, the characteristics of a dangerous but alto¬ 
gether despicable giant. 

That Evelyn should take up, on this point, an un¬ 
compromising attitude was, perhaps, not strictly 
logical, but then, as Eachel was never tired of point¬ 
ing out, logic was not his strongest quality. He had, 
at this time, already produced two novels in the 
hope, presumably, that they would succeed, and fully 
intended to add to the number as many more as his 
publisher would accept. It must not be supposed, 
however, that he failed entirely to apply his theories 
to himself—^he had, in fact, at one time, brooded al- 


An Unknown Quantity 5 

most morbidly upon tlie subject—nor that he was 
ignorant of the difficulties confronting his attitude 
of loyalty to a high ideal. The problem was not one 
of easy solution until, in a moment of inspiration, he 
found that he could quite sincerely calm the trouble¬ 
some voice of conscience by substituting for the 
word success the better-sounding one of recognition. 
Kecognition he desired, was ready to force, indeed 
he vdshed above all things that he might have to 
force it, and so crown the ultimate victory, in the 
convincing presence of many gallantly slain oppo¬ 
nents, with a greater dignity. 

When, therefore, on a bright March morning, he 
found among his letters a short invitation from a 
well-known literary agent, he allowed his natural 
feelings to surge unchecked into an emotion of 
pleasurable excitement of which the knowledge 
would have drawn from Eachel expressions of 
sincere and voluble approval. 

He read through the document again and this time 
checked, momentarily, the winged ecstasies that 
threatened to carry him quite off his feet and fly with 
him through the window, out above the roofs of 
Ebury street. There was, after all, something 
slightly mercenary about the bold caption of the 
paper, something he didn’t altogether approve, but, 
well—he hesitated, but only for a second or so— 
this was, oh yes, most certainly it was, a matter of 
recognition. He re-read the letter for the third time 
with a renewed and unclouded sense of gratification. 
The rest of his post he barely glanced at and imme¬ 
diately forgot. That single typewritten sheet, how¬ 
ever, charged, could he but have known it, with the 
full force of Destiny, he carried with conscious pride 


6 


An Unknown Quantity 

all morning in his pocket. A dozen times he glanced 
at it, twice in the gratifying presence of friends, and 
at two-fifteen precisely, with a pleasant conscious¬ 
ness of walking into an adventure, prepared to act 
upon it. 

That he should have been thus pleasurably 
affected by so ordinary a communication from 
Messrs. Hope, Cosser and Norris, is but natural, for 
there can be few things sweeter to young authorship 
than the intimation that an eminent literary agent 
has condescended to ‘Hake an interest.’’ Not even 
the excitement of seeing immature audacities 
printed, bound, and saleable, can quite compare with 
the satisfying richness of the later experience. To 
speak of “My Agent” is more subtly satisfying 
than to talk glibly of “My Book,” for it gives a 
sense of atmosphere that seems to promise per¬ 
manence. In the kindly warmth that emanated from 
Mr. Norris’s request for an interview, an artistic 
austerity, colder even than Kendle’s, would, mo¬ 
mentarily, have melted. In principle, of course, as 
he still reminded himself, though now with a less 
sturdy conviction, he didn’t approve of agents any 
more than be approved of anything connected with 
what he was pleased to call “commercial art.” Still 
—well, he would be firm, he would make it clear that 
the public need expect no concessions from him. If 
Mr. Norris liked to take him on his own terms he 
would be willing, at least, to consider the general 
situation. With his scruples thus finally quieted he 
walked that afternoon a full two inches, as it were, 
above the cobble-stones of Covent Garden, in a mood 
to accept with enthusiasm any adventure, nor did the 
sense of satisfaction diminish in strength when a 


7 


An Unknown Quantity 

small boy in livery led him with careless scorn up 
four flights of stairs to the room where he was re¬ 
quested to wait until Mr. Norris should condescend 
to see him. 

The apartment into which he was shown was light 
and cheerful. On the walls hung numerous photo¬ 
graphs, signed in flowing hands, of many of the 
famous and most of the popular authors of the day. 
In their company he felt, somehow, at home. They 
seemed to smile at him, and he found himself won¬ 
dering how long it would be before his own portrait 
would take its place in the collection and beam auto¬ 
graphed encouragement upon future aspirants. He 
checked his wandering thoughts self-consciously 
with the reflection that he didn’t know, after all, 
whether he could submit to be ranked with such 
neighbours. At best he could think of most of them 
as successful only, and that, in the sense that here 
applied, he would never let himself become. The 
thought sobered him, but only for a moment: a lyric 
mood came hard upon the heels of doubt; anything, 
he felt, might happen. 

Within a minute or two something quite definitely 
'did happen, for a door, hitherto unnoticed, opened 
suddenly, and a girl came quickly into the room. At 
the sound of the latch he rose anticipating the ex¬ 
pected summons, but sat down again with a feeling 
of mild disappointment as soon as he realised that 
the new-comer had nothing to do with him. Without 
even a glance in his direction she walked over to a 
typewriter standing on a table in the window, sat 
down, and seemed immediately to be absorbed in the 
work from which she must have been called away a 
few minutes earlier. 


8 


An Unknown Quantity 

For a while Evelyn sat on as though nothing had 
happened, then curiosity mastered him. He glanced 
at the window, turned away his eyes and let them 
wander again round the gallery of portraits, glanced 
once more and, realising that his interest was unde¬ 
tected, indulged in a lengthy investigation. The girl 
sat square to him, her face hidden by the back of the 
machine over which she was bending. The picture 
thus presented to him was decidedly imperfect, in 
fact it consisted only of two extremely attractive 
ankles in black silk stockings, the lower half of a blue 
serge skirt, swift glimpses of a yellow silk blouse, 
and an agitated crown of hair dark as ebony. Sud¬ 
denly as he looked the little typewriter bell gave a 
sharp ‘Hing,’’ and the girl glanced up quickly to 
make the new adjustment. Eendle, caught un¬ 
awares, failed to turn his head in time and their 
eyes met. Only for a moment did they face one 
another, for after a second’s pause she pushed the 
‘‘roller” raspingly over and bent once more to the 
keys. He too looked away, but he felt that his heart, 
quite unaccountably, was throbbing. He had been 
conscious in a flash of a face that bore out the 
promises of ankles and hair, a confused impression 
of pallor, dark eyes, and a small red mouth hidden 
almost as soon as seen, but provocative, exciting. 

Embarrassment swept into the room like a gust of 
warm wind. Each was conscious now, with nerves 
almost painfully alert, of the other’s presence. The 
tapping of the machine seemed to Evelyn slightly 
less dauntless than before. He ventured another 
quick look and found, this time, eyes to meet his 
glance. They were not withdrawn so rapidly as they 
had been before and he ventured a timid smile. The 


9 


An Unknown Quantity 

eyes smiled back but the mouth was hidden. No 
bell sounded, but the tapping ceased and a low, 
pleasant voice said softly: 

“I do hope this doesn’t annoy you?” 

He felt himself blushing. A sense of annoyance at 
such “gaucherie” flashed through his brain and 
vanished; but the blush remained. 

‘‘Oh, no,” he answered, “I don’t mind it at all.” 

“I can easily leave it until you’ve gone.” She 
made the preliminary movements of rising. 

“Please don’t go, I like it, honestly I do”; his tone 
was half imploring, half shy. 

Eyes smiled back at him, this time with accom¬ 
paniment of lips. He noticed now with a feeling of 
pleasure how full the mouth was, so small in repose 
but eloquent and sensitive; and as she laughed, a 
glimpse of tiny white teeth deliciously hiding. 

The tapping recommenced, but this time certainly 
with less assurance. Evelyn got up and walked over 
to the fireplace, ostensibly to light a cigarette with a 
twist of paper, really to get a less interrupted view 
of the window. He turned with the flaming spill in 
his hand. 

“Do you mind if I smoke?” 

“Oh, no, please do.” Then, after a moment’s 
pause, shyly, delightfully, ‘ ‘ I love the smell. ’ ’ 

He held his case towards her. “Won’t you have 
one too?” 

This time she laughed, a pleasant clear ripple of 
sound: not a giggle, he noticed with joy, but a real 
laugh. 

“Oh no, thank you very much,” she said, “I 
couldn’t here, besides I hardly ever do.” 

“Sometimes though?” 


10 An Unknown Quantity 

‘^Well, once in a way,’’ she admitted. 

‘ ‘ Take one away with you then, I should like you 
to.” 

She hesitated prettily for a moment, then with an¬ 
other smile at his obvious embarrassment, took the 
cigarette he otfered her. 

‘‘Well, if you really press me so, I will then; 
thanks ever so much.” 

h’or a minute or so they were both silent: the 
typewriting was not resumed, but the girl busied 
herself with some papers on the table beside her. 
Evelyn smoked quickly. He noticed that his hand 
trembled as he took the cigarette from his mouth. 

She looked up as he moved from the mantelpiece 
on which he had been leaning. 

“I’m afraid you’re being kept waiting a terribly 
long time,” she said. “Mr. Norris is very busy just 
now, but he’ll be ready in a few minutes; I’m his 
secretary.” 

Evelyn had conquered by now his first shyness; 
his blush had gone and he answered confidently with 
a smile: 

“Well, do you know I’m not sure that I’m as 
anxious as I was to see him!” 

The words came on an impulse, and as soon as he 
had spoken them he repented. They were vulgar, he 
was taking advantage of her perfectly natural 
pleasantness. A wave of self-disgust surged over 
him as she bent her face, faintly flushed, but with 
eyes still smiling, to her work. 

He was about to blurt out some awkward apology 
for his rudeness, when the door through which she 
had originally come, opened and a man’s voice called 
sharply: 


An Unknown Quantity ii 

‘‘Miss Linnet 1’’ 

Without a glance at her abashed visitor, the girl 
rose, took a scribbling pad from the table, and went 
swiftly from the room, closing the door behind her. 

After a second or so she returned. 

“Mr. Norris will see you, sir, if you will come this 
Way,^’ she said. 

As he passed through the door she did not even 
look at him. 


II 

He wanted home that evening torn by conflicting 
emotions. His interview with Mr. Norris had been 
flattering and moderately satisfactory, and though 
the memory of it would have kept him, normally, in 
a condition of considerable elation, he now barely let 
himself consider it. No longer was his mind 
occupied in contemplating the integrity of his own 
artistic future, nor did it dwell now upon the less 
noble possibility of joining, in facsimile, the illus¬ 
trious gathering whose pictures gave such an air of 
distinction to the waiting-room. The room, un¬ 
doubtedly, did occupy his imagination, but solely as 
a frame for the picture of Miss Linnet. He tried 
hard to recapture a clear visual memory of her, but 
though he concentrated his attention upon every re¬ 
membered moment of their conversation, he could 
not focus vividly enough for his satisfaction, the 
contours of her face, nor the flickering welcome of 
her smile. He had tried to see her again before he 
came away, but the room had been empty when he 
passed through it, and the typewriter, solitary in the 
window, had seemed to mock his disappointment. He 


12 An Unknown Quantity 

was determined to see her again as soon as possible. 
He must see her, if only to apologise for his bad 
manners in speaking as he had done. The more he 
thought about it the worse his conduct seemed. By 
brooding upon it he exaggerated it out of all due 
proportion. What must she have thought of him? a 
bounder presuming upon a woman ^s natural kind¬ 
ness ! He refused to spare himself a single pang of 
remorse: indeed had he known that Miss Linnet 
was, at that very moment, laughing over the incident 
as she discussed it with Miss Hilda Peacey in the 
“Bakerloo’’ Tube, he would have felt himself 
cheated of a justifiable refinement of faintly 
amorous delight. 

To get some order into his thoughts, he turned 
into Hyde Park and struck westward across the 
grass beyond the Achilles statue. The twilight was 
soft and luminous with a hint in it of summer even¬ 
ings to come, and so warm had been the last few 
days of March that, but for the network of the trees 
as yet barely budding. Nature in the half light 
assumed a false, alluring, look of June. As soon as 
he left the main path and found himself among the 
scattered trees, he became conscious of couples on 
every hand, sauntering, sitting, standing together, 
some with linked arms and some shamelessly em¬ 
bracing in passionate forgetfulness of publicity. As 
he passed them he could hear murmured snatches, 
low giggles, an occasional protest. The coarse, un¬ 
musical voices of most of the women made him 
shudder. For a moment his sentimental brooding 
was illuminated by a flash of common sense. Prob¬ 
ably Miss Linnet was just such another stupid, 
giggling creature. Why should he fancy her ditfer- 


13 


An Unknown Quantity 

ent? Why, if it came to that, should he think of her 
at all ? A casual meeting with a common little thing 
in an office, the whole adventure,—he already 
thought of the meeting as an ‘‘adventure,’’—was 
ludicrous! He tried to laugh himself free of the ob¬ 
session, but the picture of her, vaguely enchanting, 
flashed back into his brain. Then another thought 
came with staggering suddenness. How idiotic of 
him! why, of course she probably had her “boy”— 
that was the hateful word—girls like that always 
had “boys.” For a moment every vestige of 
glamour left him. He tried to see himself taking her 
to the “pictures,” stealing furtive kisses in London 
parks . . . how beastly! . . . 

The vision stayed no more than a minute, his 
romantic mood refused, automatically, the prompt¬ 
ings of realism. She hadn’t talked like that, her 
voice was low, controlled. He tried to remember 
whether she had spoken with a cockney accent, no, 
she hadn’t, of that he was convinced, and even as the 
certainty came, he dubbed himself a snob for wonder¬ 
ing. Cockney or not, it was a charming voice. 

As he walked on the sounds of the whispering 
couples jarred less frequently. He seemed to hear 
fewer giggles. The murmurous voices grew pleas¬ 
ant, suggestive, infinitely alluring. He thought of 
her lips, her hair, the slimness of her ankles and 
the long whiteness of her throat. He tried to feel 
her there by his side, to imagine a walk with her in 
the gathering dusk, and suddenly the blood was beat¬ 
ing in his temples, and the sounds of London lovers 
were entirely sweet in his ears. 


THE SECOND CHAPTER 


I 

T O those of his friends who thought much about 
the matter it always seemed that Jimmy Mc¬ 
Lennan ^s delight in playing, constantly, the part of 
host was as remarkable as his inability to make 
money. He was never really happy unless his studio 
was full, but then he was happy all over. Pleasure 
beamed from his eyes and stretched his face to 
smiles of gargantuan proportions, and the fact that 
he was always in the lowest of financial water ap¬ 
peared to make no difference to his contentment. 
There was always plenty to drink, and he had never 
been known to say laughingly that he was on his 
beam ends without adding in his funny, piping voice, 
“I say, do have some more Chianti, there^s heaps in 
the cupboard’’—and there always was. Nobody 
ever discovered how it was done, and most people 
soon abandoned the thankless exercise of wondering. 
No ‘‘duns” were seen to hang about his door, nor 
had any of his friends ever confessed to lending him 
a penny, still less to having been asked for a loan. 
The fact, unexplained but indubitable, remains, that 
he never sold a picture nor turned away a visitor. 
Such visitors too as they sometimes were! The 
critical faculty which he could bring to bear upon his 
own work, forsook him utterly when he came to deal 

14 


15 


An Unknown Quantity 

with people. He was passionately fond of collecting 
round himself the weird and the unlikely. An un¬ 
pleasing faculty, inherent in some people, for “pick¬ 
ing up’’ stray dogs, was transmuted in Jimmy into 
a power of attracting every oddment of humanity in 
London. They flocked to him drunk, or sober, by day 
and by night, sure always of a welcome, a drink, and 
even, in cases of necessity, of a bed on the floor. 
Fortunately he was not married, and Agatha Biscoe, 
who was, used to say that she could never get over 
feeling sorry for the girl who might have been his 
wife. The chief trouble, however, from the point 
of view of his friends, was that they never quite 
knew “where they were” with Jimmy. He would 
rush in upon some crony and drag him out to dinner 
in Soho, but on the road strange men would appear 
from nowhere in particular, and in the course of a 
mile or so a party of four or five or six would collect 
and stick together for the evening. 

At heart, however, he was almost unreasonably 
loyal to his real friends, though about chance ac¬ 
quaintances he might, indeed, be uncritical. They 
floated continuously round him it is true, but only at 
a distance. Within, close to him, there was a solid 
ring of intimates who survived his lightning predi¬ 
lections. Originally, of course, each one of them had 
been a “casual,” but something in them and some¬ 
thing in him had combined to keep them steadfast, to 
weld them into a sort of society for their own pleas¬ 
ure and for the mutual protection of Jimmy. They 
all, of course, “did” something in the various 
mansions of Art, and they all took themselves and 
each other very seriously, though not quite so 
seriously as Jimmy took them. He, in his wild 


i6 An Unknown Quantity 

generosity, regarded each as a genius and himself, 
humbly enough, as a spiritual patron who lacked but 
the money to be, in fact as well as fancy, a Maecenas. 
Of personal amleition he had very little. It pleased 
his vanity to know that his friends thought his pic- 
tures good, and though sometimes he did crave a 
little recognition—very little would have contented 
him—from a wider and more definitely “buying’’ 
public, he never grew bitter and always hailed the 
successes of his intimates with the enthusiasm that 
a lesser man would have kept for his own. 

It was the custom to assemble early at Jimmy’s 
studio in Swan Walk. As the night wore on va¬ 
grants were apt to turn up, and the band of stalwarts 
preferred to have him, for as long as possible, to 
themselves. He usually tried to win them to enthu¬ 
siasm with a— “Oh I say, I’ve got a wonderful man 
coming in later,” or “Have you seen that new 
fellow’s work at the Chenil? he said he’d drop in 
about twelve” or “I met a capital chap at the ‘Good 
Intent’ last week. I’ll get him to recite one of his 
poems when he turns up,” but with the coming of 
the comparative strangers the atmosphere became 
diluted and the conversation, drifting away from 
personalities, was apt to be less amusing. 

One gets, perhaps, a typical view of Jimmy on an 
evening of this same March with an early spring 
blizzard shaking the windows, and sleet drifting 
down in fine powder through the insecure corner of 
the ceiling that always, in bad weather, had a bath 
beneath it to save the company from inundation. 
The room assumed nothing in appearance that was 
not its due. It looked like the stable to serve as 
which, strangely enough, it had been originally de- 


An Unknown Quantity 17 

signed and built. In summer it fulfilled, admirably, 
the purposes of a studio, but winter, as even its 
tenant regretfully admitted, taxed its structural 
peculiarities severely. It lurked, with rather a 
shamefaced air, at the bottom of a garden belonging 
to one of the dignified, flat-fronted, houses of the 
Walk. A legal doubt as to the identity of its owner 
had long kept the rent at Jimmy figure, though it 
brought counterbalancing disadvantages resulting 
from uncertainty as to who was responsible for 
much-needed repairs to walls and roof. Jimmy, who 
enjoyed nothing so much as painting in imagina¬ 
tion, scenes of Sybaritic luxury, was content, in fact, 
with the most elementary standard of comfort, so 
that the shortcomings of his home were never so 
apparent to him as to his vistors. The non-existence 
of a landlord never failed to appeal to him as a 
gigantic joke, and the sudden appearance of new 
fissures in the ceiling called forth from him no pro¬ 
test more vibrant than the moving of his bed to a 
corner more immediately immune from the threat of 
flood. 

On the particular evening under review the stove 
was burning brightly and without the accompani¬ 
ment of misdirected smoke that sometimes lessened 
the geniality of its warmth. The bath was pleas¬ 
antly vocal and the room comfortably filled by the 
more desirable, in their own eyes, of Jimmy’s multi¬ 
tudinous acquaintances. He himself was running 
about, as he always was, a confused medley of legs 
and arms, looking for mysterious stores of drink 
that he ‘‘knew he had got somewhere,” and in com¬ 
parison with his unceasing antics the immobility of 
his guests seemed almost remarkable. Agatha 



i8 An Unknown Quantity 

Biseoe of course always did give that impression: it 
was part of her general air, just a little too perfect 
with her soft, faintly silvered hair and wide humor¬ 
ous eyes, of having nothing to do with Bohemia, of 
endlessly enjoying, from a position of mature re¬ 
pose, the sight of her host’s ridiculous manoeuvres 
and the ponderous movements of her enormous hus¬ 
band. She sat, throned almost, as it was fitting she 
should be, in the only practicable armchair; the 
other members of the company being mostly on the 
floor, though Liell Beverley had withdrawn to 
Jimmy’s bed, on which he lay, rivalling with the 
gurglings of his pipe the noises of invading rain¬ 
water. In the darkness of the corner little of him 
could be seen, nothing in fact but the strong, clear 
outline of a head, sternly cropped, bright quick eyes, 
and a face buried in the wild desert of a beard that 
seemed, in aggressive opposition to his disciplined 
locks, to have concentrated in itself all the hairy pos¬ 
sibilities of his body. Malcolm Prosser, about whom 
his friends knew little save that he went to every 
performance of the Stage Society, and flitted, in the 
interim, about Chelsea like the embodied spirit of the 
esoteric drama, was pensive in a corner, and 
“Bunny” Cobbold, apparently so called in accord¬ 
ance with the rule of opposites,—for there was little 
likeness to the rabbit in her narrow, sullen, eyes and 
the heavy curve of her lips—sat nonchalantly astride 
a painting stool, momentarily content to feel that 
she did really look like a “John” portrait, and that 
a stranger entering suddenly would assume that she 
had lived in open sin with every man in the room. 
On the other side of the stove Doris Carter, normally 
silent to excess and therefore less remarkable now 


An Unknown Quantity 19 

for her failure to speak, monopolised the whole of 
the sofa upon which she lay at full length. Her face 
was pale and smooth, her eyes surprisedly open, and 
she had a way of looking too innocent to be anything 
but an adventuress, which she was not, and too 
stupid to be the promising emotional actress she 
actually was. Her reticence came partly from real 
lack of education coupled with a determination 
never to ‘‘give herself away’’ even to her friends, 
partly from an idea that silence was a sign of pro¬ 
found feeling. She believed wholeheartedly in the 
passions of which she had no experience, and intel¬ 
lectually in the supreme value of suffering, a theory 
which she had extracted from half a course of lec¬ 
tures on Nietzsche. On a cushion at her feet 
Stephen Langley the poet, dressed in a coat of grey 
corduroy, a black shirt and vivid green tie, sat, 
crouched haggardly behind the barrier of his knees, 
and in the distance, visible merely as a gigantic mass 
of deeper shadow in the general gloom. Jack Biscoe 
lay, propped heavily against the wall. 

Suddenly there was a clatter of falling wood, and 
from behind a stack of frames and canvases, Jimmy 
emerged triumphantly with a basketful of bottles. 

“I knew they were somewhere,” he said. “Now 
then, beer or sherry, which?” he added to the room 
at large, “or both?” 

The end of his peregrinations seemed the signal 
for renewed conversation. “Bunny” as usual spoke 
first. 

“What a stomach you must have, Jimmy!” she 
remarked, “ or is it merely head ? I never knew such 
a man for variety.” 

“Oh, I don’t take it all myself, you know, but 


20 


An Unknown Quantity 

people like a change. By Jove! I know what I’ll 
do, I’ll make some sherry punch: splendid stuff for a 
cold night, and it’ll be going nicely by the time the 
others come.” 

Jack Biscoe moved noisily. “I’d rather you threw 
me over a bottle of beer,” he boomed. “I shall 
probably be gone by the time that brew of yours is 
ready. ’ ’ 

“What atrocities have you got coming round to¬ 
night 1 ’ ’ asked ‘ ‘ Bunny. ’ ’ 

Jimmy laughed nervously. He knew what his 
friends thought of his peculiar weakness and he 
tried, as a rule, to treat their comments jokingly. 
All the same he never felt quite comfortable in the 
attempt. “Oh, young David promised to look in,” 
he said. “He’s really awfully nice when you know 
him. ’ ’ 

''Not that appalling Jew-boy, Louis David?” 
moaned Langley, rocking his head forward on to 
his knees. ‘ ‘ David. Doris, think of it, David! ’ ’ 

“But you’ll love his singing,” urged Jimmy, “it’s 
really jolly, and he said he’d bring his balalaika.” 

"And his shawms, sackbuts and cymbals,” sug¬ 
gested “Bunny.” 

“Besides, apart from all that he’s for ever traih 
ing after the Kenet woman and all that Hampstead 
lot,” continued Langley. 

“So long as we don’t have to look at his pictures, 
I don’t so much mind,” said “Bunny,” “they’re in¬ 
expressible.” 

Beverley rolled over on the bed. “When clique 
meets clique-” he muttered. 

“Hang it all, Liell, they’re cheap beyond any¬ 
thing,” Langley answered, “and as for Cynthia 



21 


An Unknown Quantity 

Renet, she jnst hangs on to anything new until she’s 
sucked it dry, and then she starts on something 
else.” 

“And we’re not new enough, hence the bitter¬ 
ness.” 

“Bitterness be damned,” exploded “Bunny,” 
whom Beverley aroused invariably to opposition, 
“I’m with Stephen; who on earth wants to be taken 
up by Hampstead?” 

“Oh, Cynthia isn’t half a bad sort really, is she, 
Jack?” put in Agatha. 

“She’s all right, I suppose, but I don’t know that 
I’ve an awful lot of use for her.” 

“She’s a great friend of Peter’s.” 

“Oh, Peter!” sneered Langley, “he’s not over- 
fastidious, is he?” 

“Well, at least he’s trying to squeeze some money 
out of her for this old theatre of Jack’s, and it 
doesn’t look as though there’ll be much of a chance 
for it unless he succeeds.” 

“Who wants a chance of that sort?” 

“All of you if you can get it,” snapped Beverley. 
“You make me sick, Stephen, and you too, ‘Bunny’: 
d’you mean to tell me that you wouldn’t, every one 
of you, simply jump at it if you could?” 

“And be hail fellow with David?” “Bunny’s” 
voice shook with scorn. 

“Damn David! what’s he got to do with it?” 

“If you sell your soul to the Renet you’ve got 
to play about with her friends. ’ ’ 

“Sell your fiddlesticks! you’ve got a mind like an 
art student, ‘Bunny’; you can never think outside 
four walls and half a dozen streets: you’re always 
burbling about sets, and groups, and movements. 


22 


An Unknown Quantity 

Still you’re not the only one, we’re all just as bad, 
and that’s why we’re all such damned failures. We 
can’t trust ourselves outside our own little mental 
neighbourhood. ’ ’ 

‘‘Speak for yourself, grumps; you won’t find me 
going out of my way to get a crumb from the kind 
lady’s table. If I’m satisfied with my work that’s 
good enough for me.” 

“We must live for our art,” murmured Doris, not 
altogether relevantly, in the moving timbre of her 
lower register. 

“Directly you begin to work for success you lose 
your artistic self-respect,” said Prosser moodily 
from the outer darkness. 

‘ ‘ Cliche, ’ ’ growled Beverley. 

“It’s not cliche,” countered Langley. “I don’t 
pretend I shouldn’t like success so long as I can get 
it with what I’m satisfied is good, but we’ve got to 
work in our own way: above all we’ve got to keep 
clean. ’ ’ 

“By which profound remark you mean that we’ve 
got to go on bathing in our own little dirty puddle 
instead of risking the sea,” replied Beverley, roused 
now to fighting pitch. “It’s all damned cowardice; you 
can’t any of you trust yourselves out of sight of your 
friends; you won’t take what is legitimately offered 
because you’re afraid of being false to catchwords. 
There’s no particular merit in believing in the things 
that everybody round you believes in and talks about 
all day and all night. It’s when you get up against 
the unbeliever that there’s a chance of showing what 
your ideal’s worth. ’ ’ 

“It is the fate of the artist to throw his pearls be¬ 
fore swine,” intoned Doris in a moving sing-song. 


An Unknown Quantity 23 

‘^Well, I’d rather do that than keep them hidden 
away in a washleather bag,” snapped Beverley. 

‘‘We’re not all so thick-skinned as yon, grnmps,” 
said ‘ ‘ Bnnny. ’ ’ 

“Exactly! yon can’t any of yon face real criti¬ 
cism : yon find yonr salvation in exclnsiveness; yon 
work for a clique.” 

Jimmy, bending over the stove to snperintend the 
mannfactnre of his pnnch, tnrned his head. “I say, 
Liell,” he said, “have some more to drink and let’s 
keep off personalities; they rnin the evening.” 

Langley, however, was not to be silenced so easily: 
‘ ‘Well, I know how 1 shonld feel if any of my friends 
allowed themselves to be exploited.” 

Beverley jnmped to the bait; “Who got a chance, 
yon mean, of looking over the wall of yonr own par- 
ticnlar little preserve? well then, how abont Eve¬ 
lyn ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, Eendle! he’s safe enongh.” 

“Is he, from yonr point of view? ‘DISTOR¬ 
TIONS’ has been acclaimed, yon know!” 

“It compelled notice, people conldn’t ignore it,” 
“Bnnny” challenged, lond-voiced. 

Doris once again canght, as it were, her cne. “I 
fonnd it strangely stark,” she said. 

The comment passed nnnoticed. Beverley drove 
steadily onwards. “Anyhow,” he said, “it’s taking 
him away, it’s bringing him a public.” 

“Snrely that mnst be a good thing,” proclaimed 
Agatha, “it gives him new experiences.” 

“Exactly! that’s my whole point, Agatha.” 
Beverley tnrned to the speaker with the air of one 
welcoming an ally: “Evelyn mnst get away from 


24 An Unknown Quantity 

. all this/’ he swung his arm vaguely, ‘‘unless he’s 
going to stick at ‘Distortions.’ ” 

“Why should he get away from it?” asked 
Langley, “he likes it and he knows we believe in 
him. ’ ’ 

“He’s never had a chance of seeing anything 
else.” 

“You can give Eendle a long run for his money,” 
interjected Prosser, “he’ll always come back.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, damn the coming-back, as you call it! Why 
this beastly assumption that Evelyn belongs to us? 
why should we ‘give him a run’ at all?” 

“He’s got a wonderful power of detachment, he 
can absorb experience and use it.” 

“Don’t quote the newspapers! perhaps you will 
say next that ‘ there is every indication of his becom¬ 
ing the English Maupassant!’ ” 

“But he has; I don’t care what the papers say.” 

“He may have or he may not; it’s too soon to 
say. Anyone who knows nothing of life except what 
he’s got out of books and conversation can be de¬ 
tached. That’s why you’re all so bad for him. 
Evelyn’s never yet touched life at first hand, and 
personally I’m anxious to see what he’ll make of it 
when he does.” 

“He will suffer,” said Doris mysteriously, “and 
he will find Beauty in suffering.” 

“That remains to be seen.” 

“He will fall in love,” she continued, an ecstatic 
note creeping into her voice; “I feel that he is 
strong enough to face the splendour of passion and 
to build great art from it! ” 

“Thats pure assumption,” Beverely replied. “I 


An Unknown Quantity 25 

don^t mind betting that Evelyn’s never been really 
in love yet.” 

‘‘How can you know that?” “Bunny” flung out 
the challenge as though she were defending her own 
character from unworthy imputation. 

“Isn’t it obvious from the way he writes about 
women?” 

“But hang it all,” objected Biscoe, “the 
Cicerone was full of the love scenes in ‘Dis¬ 
tortions.’ ” 

“Oh, of course he can do that/^ snapped Beverley 
impatiently. “He can get hold of the sort of 
intellectuahsed amorousness he sees in the studios, 
because he doesn’t need any degree of imagination 
to probe it. That sort of woman’s easy enough to 
understand. Priggishness wipes out most sex dif¬ 
ferences. What I want to see is Evelyn up against 
the natural woman, the unsophisticated female. ’ ’ 

“When that happens,” said Agatha, “he’ll prob¬ 
ably settle down into solid matrimony.” 

‘ ‘ Probably, ’ ’ agreed Beverley. 

He threw the comment with an air of challenge 
at the company. Prosser took it up. 

“The artist can never be ‘solidly’ married, as 
you call it. His art must always come first: free¬ 
dom is his prime necessity.” 

“Are you solemnly sitting there and telling me 
that a writer must never marry?” 

“Oh, no! if he finds the right woman, of course 

-” Beverley swung his legs from the sofa and 

sat up. 

“The right woman, I suppose, is one who will 
din into his ears the same sort of nonsense as you 
do?” 



26 An Unknown Quantity 

Doris’s moiirnfnl chorus was again faintly 
audible. 

‘‘His wife will have to sacrifice much. They will 
both su:ffer!” 

“Well, she hasn’t arrived yet, so we needn’t dis¬ 
cuss her,” remarked Agatha with admirable sanity. 

“Perhaps she never will,” said Stephen. 

“My God!” said “Bunny,” “fancy Eendle 
married!” 

The door of the studio swung open suddenly, 
letting in a gale of wind and a shower of sleet. 

“Don’t fancy anything of the sort!” said a new 
voice, “and don’t talk of people behind their backs.” 

The interruption caused a general movement in 
the room. Chairs creaked and feet scraped noisily 
on the floor. 

“Oh, do shut the door!” cried Agatha Biscoe; 
“there’s quite enough rain coming through the roof 
as it is!” 

Evelyn did as he was asked, flung off his coat 
and hat, and stamped noisily to the stove. In the 
ill-lit room, foggy now with tobacco smoke, he 
would have given to eyes seeing him for the first 
time an impression merely of great height. Upon 
closer examination, had such been sought, they 
might have noticed that his face possessed a width 
and squareness of jaw so unusual as to constitute 
almost a deformity. The absence of beard and 
moustache accentuated a firmness of contour that 
conveyed an impression of will possibly not borne 
out by the experiences of more intimate acquain¬ 
tance. Apart from this feature the face was not re¬ 
markable. The eyes, light in tone, were set wide 
apart and the nose was straight and rather short. 


An Unknown Quantity 27 

The hair, so fair as to be almost bleached, fell 
thickly backwards, though a stray lock or two lay 
carelessly upon its owner ^s forehead. 

‘‘Good evening, Jimmy,he said; “give me some¬ 
thing to drink, for Heaven’s sake; I’m as thirsty 
as a tramp.” 

“With your gift for dramatic entrance, you ought 
to write plays, Hendle,” laughed Biscoe; “when I 
get that theatre of mine going, I shall come on you 
for' something.” 

“Hullo, Jack, you old rotter, I didn’t see you. 
Jimmy, when you’ve done routing round your 
poison cupboard, I’ve got some news for you. Old 
Callaghan wants you to do him a couple of colour 
plates for the June Zodiac; I promised him to 
sound you about them.” 

Jimmy blushed with pleasure. “Oh, I say, that’s 
awfully jolly of you! What sort of thing does he 
want! ’ ’ 

“Come round to tea to-morrow and you can talk 
it over with him. You’d better come along too, 
'Bunny’; I don’t see why he shouldn’t have one or 
two of your woodcuts as well.” The suggestion was 
subtly patronising. 

“Thanks, I can’t.” “Bunny” spoke sharply and 
looked sulkily at him with heightened colour. 

A pause, threatening embarrassment, followed her 
words. Jimmy, however, with his unerring instinct 
for the niceties of hospitality, came to the rescue 
by hurriedly circulating his steaming brew. 

“Thank God, here’s the drink at last!” Evelyn 
cried, turning to him; “I’m perished with cold and 
dam’ thirsty!” A moment later he put his glass 
down quickly on the floor beside him. 


28 


An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘Great Heavens!’’ he said, “yon might have 
warned me of the temperature of this filthy stuff. 
I asked for drink not brimstone, you old ass!” 

With one or two false starts, comparable to the 
sputtering of an engine into renewed activity after 
a temporary breakdown, the conversation of the 
company once again became general, and under 
cover of the newly arisen clamour Evelyn moved 
across the room to Agatha and sat down at her side. 

She bent her head to him. 

“Anything wrong, Evelyn?” she queried. 
“You’re looking done up.” 

“I’ve just had a week at Stonechurch, and my 
mother was rather overpowering.” 

His voice gave the impression that he was taking 
himself very seriously—more seriously indeed than 
he took the experience he was obviously about to 
relate. 

Agatha waited in silence for him to continue. 

“She’s always hinting marriage at me. It’s a 
complex state of mind.” His voice dropped as 
though he were talking to himself rather than to 
his companion. The intonation, giving so clearly 
an air of privacy, took from the words the slight 
tinge of priggishness that might otherwise have 
coloured them. “She’s nervous about me, you 
know, hates my living alone; it’s half parental 
solicitude, half social pride; and then on top of that 
there’s that dreadful maternal instinct. She lives, 
you know, for possible grandchildren. Oh, why the 
devil can’t people leave my future alone!” he added 
irritably. “You were all talking about it even here, 
before I came in.” 

Agatha ignored the show of temper. 


An Unknown Quantity 29 

‘‘Did she scold you?” she asked. 

“Heavens, no! I could have met that. It was 
the atmosphere of affection, of ‘twittering’ if you 
know what I mean. She’s never got over her horror 
of my living a life that she can only guess at.” 

‘ ‘ Did she say marriage in so many words ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, last night. She’d been leading up to it, of 
course, for a long time, but it came out pat then, 
after dinner.” He added ruefully, “She was so 
damned loving about it.” 

Agatha laughed. “What did you say?” 

“Oh, I hedged, I suppose; made some silly joke 
about her standing all the possible girls up in rows. 
I don’t want it, Agatha; at least, I don’t think I 
want it. ’ ’ He set his jaws and the action, strangely 
enough, imparted to his face a look not of strength 
but of weakness touched with obstinacy. “It makes 
me feel rather a brute, you know.” 

There was a pause, which he broke to continue: 

“There’s something infernally attractive about 
the idea, all the same; that’s what’s worrying me. 
I can’t get it out of my head now she’s put it there. 
It’s not just the sexual relationship, I don’t mean 
that; it’s the element of permanence, the sense of 
union. I’ve had affaires, of course, but there’s 
nothing in that.^^ 

“You’ve been with women?” she queried. 

“Naturally.” Then in a burst: “God! it is good 
to be able to talk to you like this, you old Mother 
Confessor; you do understand.” 

“I try to,” she smiled. 

“I’m through with all that,” he went on. “I 
feel that there is a lot else, but I’m uncertain. I 
never am as a rule and I hate the sensation, but 


30 


An Unknown Quantity 

I am about this. The trouble is that I can see all 
round marriage so clearly. It sounds a horrible 
priggish thing to say, but I can.’’ 

She laughed again. 

‘‘My dear, you do take yourself seriously. How 
old are youf” 

He glanced up at her, surprised by the question. 

“ Twenty-six, ” he replied. 

“Twenty-six! Why, you’ve got all your life be¬ 
fore you. You’ll fall in love one of these days, and 
then all these terrible doubts ’ll go by the board. 
You’ll wake up with a wife.” 

“I know, and that’s what frightens me. It’s just 
what will happen, and I want to stay free. There’s 
my work, and all this,” he indicated the smoke- 
dimmed studio with a toss of his head, “all of you, 
I can’t risk losing it.” 

“Did you tell your mother that?” 

“How could I? She simply wouldn’t under¬ 
stand. ’ ’ 

“And it makes you feel ‘rather a brute’ ?” 

“Yes. You see, she doesn’t really know the sort 
' of life I do lead.” 

“Are you ashamed of yourself?” 

“Not a bit, not a scrap!” The note of conviction 
in his voice was perhaps a shade too emphatic. 

“Well, isn’t that all that matters? Go ahead, 
my dear, find things out, but be honest with vour- 
self.” 

“Do you know,” he replied, looking up at her 
gloomily, “I sometimes wonder whether I’ve got 
any self to be honest with.” 

“What’s the matter?” 

“Moods, I suppose.” 


An Unknown Quantity 31 

Agatha smiled. think, Evelyn, you’d better 
have another drink,” she said. 


II 

As Henry Evelyn Bendle set out for home some 
hours later, the sharp wind of dawn was busy 
drying the streets. Already the pavements looked 
grey in the gusty light of the blown lamps, and all 
that remained of the evening’s deluge lay here and 
there, diminished to small pools, brown and black, 
in the sunken corners of the flags. There was a fresh¬ 
ness in the air that drove the scattered policemen 
to indulge in a restrained frenzy of arm flapping, 
and swept from Evelyn’s mind the last dusty relics 
of depression. Moods, as he realised, came to him 
with an almost terrifying rapidity of succession, 
each, for its spell of authority, holding him bound, 
but vanishing as quickly as it came. As he walked 
eastwards his eyes were caught and held by the 
twinkling of an electric sign that jumped and zig¬ 
zagged straight before him. The proprietors who 
exhibited it must, it seemed to him, be both opti¬ 
mistic and prosperous, to continue thus undismayed 
their feverish expenditure of electricity throughout 
the deserted hours of early morning, with no thought 
for the empty world to which the message flashed. 
‘‘DRINK” flared suddenly in scarlet fire, only to 
vanish on the instant while below, in green, 
“STOUT” sprang into being. That too died, and 
solemnly, letter by letter in capitals of gigantic size, 
“BARCLAY’S” drove amber spears into the dark¬ 
ness. Then all was dead for a moment until in a 


32 An Unknown Quantity 

blaze of fire, the whole legend sprawled white across 
the sky, ‘‘DRINK BARCLAY’S STOUT.” The 
theme thus given, a fugue began of red and gold 
and emerald. Every conceivable variation of the 
three words shot into the gloom. “BARCLAY’S 
STOUT,” “DRINK BARCLAY’S,” “DRINK 
STOUT” sang the tune, and then, as if in triumph, 
the isolated notes crashed out in solo, “DRINK”— 
‘ ‘ BARCLAY’S ’ ’—‘ ‘ STOUT. ’ ’ 

The spectacle fascinated Evelyn, and he found 
himself, as he walked, trying to keep count of the 
various combinations which nevertheless eluded 
him in their complexity. The pattern of colours on 
the windy night seemed, somehow, to become per¬ 
sonal to him. It merged into the comfortable mem¬ 
ory of Jimmy’s punch and brought contentment. 
As he watched it he watched, as it were, himself, 
from some eminence supremely aloof. He contem¬ 
plated, in detachment, the kaleidoscope of his moods, 
but somehow he could not shake them altogether 
free from the sparkle and swiftness and precision 
of that illuminating blaze above the emptiness of 
Sloane Square. Like its component sentences, they 
came upon him suddenly vivid; like them too they 
vanished to reappear diversified indeed, but with all 
the certainty and hardness of electric light. As 
they sprang to life in him they focussed his atten¬ 
tion, absorbing it for the time being, and then died, 
only to give place to newer permutations. The 
thought, as he developed it, gave him pleasure. It 
flattered him as an artist. How quick must be a 
mind that could change so swiftly, respond so 
truly, to every shade of emotion! It must be really 
rather a good mind to have so sure a gift of flash- 


An Unknown Quantity 33 

ing, and then, in addition, to possess so excellent 
a power of seeing itself in all its guises! Elation 
gripped him and carried him onwards. He crossed 
the square and passed beneath the untiring banks 
of light. Seen from close at hand the magic less¬ 
ened. The mechanism forced itself on the atten¬ 
tion. He could see now the rows of little lamps, 
could watch the coils of wire glow into life and jerk 
back into darkness. His mind turned to the thought 
of how such things were controlled, the switchboard, 
the cables, the great dynamos that drove the waves 
of power into each sensitive extremity. He too 
had control, he could fix those moods of his when he 
would. At that moment it seemed that nobody 
could possibly hold anything so surely in his power 
as he could hold the sensitive appliance of his 
spirit. He wasnT to be ruled by moods; oh no! 
they were for him to drive, to turn to his own uses, 
to be his points of contact with life. Let him but 
determine and he could fix his lights, never fear, 
could make them shine in whatever pattern, with 
whatever colours he willed. Only so could he be 
sure of great achievement. Penultimate fumes of 
sherry punch swept into his brain. How good that 
last book of his had been, and how much better the 
next one was to be! He felt certain, now, of his 
ability to exceed his best onwards and onwards. 
People were beginning to believe in him: Jimmy, 
the ‘‘studio.’’ What a capital lot they were. 

He figured to himself a future of ever-growing 
power, the same friends round him, the same in¬ 
tellectual integrity. Pictures rose before him of 
the world at his feet, panoramas of the rich and 
the influential striving and trampling to win him 


34 An Unknown Quantity 

from his old allegiance. That they should never 
do. The success he aimed at lay in dominion not 
in popularity. He would stay as he was, true to 
his friends and his life here in Chelsea. He would 
rule the world, or all of it that mattered, the world 
of taste and intellect, from his own rather solitary, 
and quite distinctly imperial, throne. One must, 
after all, create in detachment, one must cling to 
that, build on that. He smiled complacently at the 
thought, now pleasantly dim, of his mother’s scarcely 
veiled anxiety. Marriage? Well, that too, in his 
present mood, seemed a possibility remotely en¬ 
joyable. A wife, charming, intelligent, appreciative: 
a hostess for his friends, a perpetual object of dedi¬ 
cation for his books, the companion of his deliber¬ 
ately chosen, artistic, and not too ascetic solitude. 
The search for such a wife appealed to him now 
as a worthy adventure, the ^Horming” of her as a 
task pleasantly absorbing for his leisure. 

He turned into Ebury Street from Eaton Terrace 
and took out his latchkey. As he climbed the stairs 
to his rooms the sensation of control, of strength, 
of divinity, surged with the last gust of punch into 
a final intoxication. 


Ill 

Evelyn’s moods, as he himself had so recently 
realised in an ectasy of semi-sobriety, were, for all 
the variety and sparkle of their ‘‘tones,” for all the 
frequency of their occurrence, but visitors en passant. 
It was rare indeed for any one of them to persist 
beyond an hour or two, and it did not, therefore, 


An Unknown Quantity 35 

surprise him to find, in the days immediately fol¬ 
lowing Jimmy’s party, that the recent importunities 
of his mother had ceased to worry him and that the 
qualified enthusiasm of Mr. Norris no longer filled 
his mind with excitement. Perhaps it would be more 
accurate to say that the sudden death of these 
emotions would not have been surprising had it not 
been for one remarkable and disturbing fact, one 
exception that by breaking not only proved the 
rule, but forced him to an unwilling and distinctly 
annoying consciousness of the breach. The ghost of 
one sensation would not be laid, the memory of a 
few short minutes persisted in tantalizing him be¬ 
yond endurance. For several days it had taken the 
form merely of an unwonted restlessness, refusing to 
crystallise, avoiding his every endeavour to capture 
and control it, until at length it took form in his 
memory as the picture of Miss Linnet. 

He forced himself to account for the obsession by 
recalling the ill-manners that had sprung from the 
embarrassment of their meeting, for, try as he 
might, he could not bring himself to admit, as the 
cause of his eagerness to see her, anything more 
deeply emotional. It would be altogether too humili¬ 
ating a confession that he of all people should have 
fallen victim to a typist in his agent’s office! Oh 
no! the idea was absurd, farcical! The explanation 
was, of course, far simpler, nothing, indeed, but 
compunction at a ^ ‘ gaucherie, ” a desire to retrieve 
his self-respect. The fact remained that he wanted 
eagerly, or as he put it to himself, ‘Melt that he 
ought to see her again, and in order to dispel his 
growing restlessness he set about putting his vague 
intention into effect. But to see her was not enough: 


36 An Unknown Quantity 

he must find her alone, that the process of his 
amende honorable might be undisturbed. This 
could best be managed, he finally decided, by making 
an appointment for the early afternoon, and with 
his Machiavelian plan in his head, he rang up the 
office on the telephone and left word that he would 
call on the next afternoon about two o ^clock. 

He slept badly that night, haunted by the thought 
that the morning ^s post would bring a letter post¬ 
poning the interview or altering its time. Nothing 
happened however to interfere with his scheme,^ 
and shortly after half-past one he approached the 
offices of Messrs. Hope, Cosser and Norris, with 
feelings in which excitement and fear were so 
equally blended that he had to walk twice up and 
down the full length of the street before he could 
bring himself to enter the building. At last he did 
so, and, avoiding this time the small boy who had 
been his guide before, mounted the stairs and 
knocked, unheralded, at the door. For an instant 
he felt himself a prey to utter terror, and it took all 
his obstinacy to keep him from beating a hasty re¬ 
treat ; but the moment passed and was succeeded by 
a sudden access of calmness. There was no reply 
to his knock and his heart sank. He knocked again, 
and this time a voice said “Come in,’’ a voice that 
he recognised with a sick spasm of the stomach as 
hers beyond any possibility of doubt. 

He turned the handle and entered the room. She 
was there by the same table in the same window. 
He felt suddenly dizzy, and scarcely realising what 
he did, closed the door behind him and took off his 
hat. 

“Good afternoon,” he said, and his voice seemed 


An Unknown Quantity 37 

to him like that of another person. ‘‘IVe got an 
appointment with Mr. Norris, but I’m afraid I’m 
rather early.” 

She smiled her recognition. “Mr. Norris is out 
at lunch; I don’t think he’ll be in till two o’clock.” 

How well his plans had gone! “May I wait?” 
he asked. 

“Of course, won’t you sit down?” 

He took a chair, this time near the fireplace so 
that he might have an uninterrupted view of her 
profile as she worked. 

His nervousness showed itself for the first minute 
or two in facetiousness. “Mr. Norris must be 
having a very good lunch,” he said, and cursed in¬ 
wardly the poverty of his wit. 

For some reason she chose to ignore the at¬ 
tempted humour of his opening. 

“Oh, he’s never back before two,” she replied 
with adorable severity. 

Evelyn felt himself powerless to speak. His 
heart was beating again tumultuously, his hand 
trembled on his stick. What a delicious voice she 
had! bubbling, fresh, like water. There was depth 
in her eyes; determination and intelligence about 
the lines of her chin and the poise of her head. 
Oh no, she wasn’t by any means the ordinary kind 
of pretty typist! 

The silence between them was broken by the 
stabbing rattle of the machine and the regular re¬ 
currence of the sharp “ting” as each line was com¬ 
pleted. His eyes were fascinated by the play of her 
fingers on the keys. 

He broke through the spell of dumbness with a 
conscious effort. All memory of his imagined rude- 


38 An Unknown Quantity 

ness had left him, and he forgot entirely his intended 
apology. Instead- 

‘‘You must be quite sick of seeing famous men/’ 
he remarked, glancing at the long line of photo¬ 
graphs. 

“Oh, they don’t often come, not themselves.” 
She looked up from her work with a smile; the com¬ 
ment was not altogether unfamiliar to her. 

“Do you like reading their books!” 

“I’m not a great one for reading.” The phrase 
which would, in other circumstances, have jarred 
upon him, seemed now enchanting. 

“I don’t suppose you have much time for it?” 

“I like a good book every now and then.” 

“What kind of books do you like best?” 

“Oh, anything.” 

The utter lack of meaning in the words took on 
for him the colour of an alluring simplicity. 

“What do you like doing best when you’re not 
working?” 

She seemed incapable of envisaging the generali¬ 
sation. 

“I don’t know, anything,” she replied, bending 
her head once more to her work. This time he could 
not but notice the poverty of her conversational 
powers, but his fevered mind twisted it into a sweet 
confession of shyness. 

“I expect you like theatres, don’t you?” 

She looked up quickly, her face alive, momem 
tarily, with real excitement. 

“Oh yes, I love a good show.” 

The beating of his heart became oppressive. He 
knew what he wanted to say, but his tongue would 
not form the words. He paused for what seemed 



An Unknown Quantity 39 

to him an eternity, and through his mind kept 
flashing the idea that he had actually said them— 
he seemed to hear himself saying them, to see him¬ 
self watching her face to gauge their effect. This 
illusion of having spoken persisted but no words 
came. With a show of complete innocence she con¬ 
tinued her work, knowing exactly what his next sen¬ 
tence would be. 

His ears, alive to every sound, detected a distant 
footfall. It must be Norris returning from lunch. 
He forced himself to speak. 

wonder whether you^d like to come to one with 
me some evening!^’ he asked in a voice that, for all 
his efforts at self-control, was husky and uncertain. 

She bent her head still lower, turned slightly 
away from him so that he could see nothing but 
the dark mass of her hair and the soft contour of 
one pale cheek. Her reply was so faint that he had 
to strain to hear it. 

‘HHs ever so kind of you, but really I don’t think 
I could.” 

“Why on earth not?” Now that the first step 
had been taken his nervousness was less apparent. 

“I don’t think I could, really.” 

“But you do enjoy theatres, don’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Do you dislike 

She smiled at him, hands idle in her lap. 

“Don’t be silly! of course not.” 

“Well then, why won’t you? there must be a 
reason.” 

“I don’t know.” 

He was determined now to have his way. “Will 
you think it over?” he pleaded. 


40 


An Unknown Quantity 

“Perhaps.’^ 

‘‘That’s not enough, will you promise, honour 
bright?” 

She looked him straight in the face. “All 
right,” she said, and then as he still looked doubt¬ 
ful, “I’m not kidding,” she added in a tone of subtle 
familiarity. 

“When will you tell me?” 

“Oh, I can’t say.” 

“But there is a chance?” 

“There may be.” 

“I shan’t know a moment’s peace until you say 
you will!” 

“Don’t be so silly.” 

“Keally I shan’t; you do believe me, don’t you?” 

“If you say so, I suppose I must.” 

“It’s true, honestly. Where do you live?” 

She hesitated as though pondering the propriety 
of giving the information: then, “The Junction” 
she murmured. 

“May I write to you?” 

“I don’t mind.” 

“What’s your address—and your name?” He 
knew that she was Miss Linnet, but he had a faint 
hope that she might tell him more. 

“Miss J. Linnet, 15 Verbena Terrace.” 

“Will you write back?” 

“Yes, of course I will.” Her smile was frank. 

The sound of somebody moving in the farther 
room was now unmistakable. She pushed back her 
chair and got up. 

“That must be Mr. Norris back from lunch,” she 
said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.” 

She opened the communicating door and went 


An Unknown Quantity 41 

through, leaving it slightly ajar. Evelyn walked 
over to the window and regarded the seat she had 
just left with intensity. He laid his hand gently 
upon the typewriter and stood there for a moment, 
quite still, his head drooped forward, almost like a 
man in prayer. After a second or so he started, 
blushed furiously, and with an air of careful non¬ 
chalance walked to the other end of the room. As 
he turned again to face the window Miss Linnet 
returned. 

‘‘Mr. Norris will see you now,’’ she said and 
crossed to her place. 

As he passed her on his way to the door he paused 
with hand outstretched. 

“Eemember what you’ve promised!” he whis¬ 
pered, smiling. 

“Of course I will.” She touched his hand lightly 
with her own. “You really musn’t be so silly!” 
she whispered, and waited for the door to close be¬ 
hind him before she started once more to play 
staccato tunes upon her typewriter. She seemed to 
be absorbed in the pages of shorthand notes on the 
stand beside her, but she smiled to herself as she 
worked. 


THE THIRD CHAPTER 


I 

I NSTEAD of going home, Evelyn, after his short 
and entirely unnecessary interview with Mr. 
Norris, walked down to the Emhanlonent. He 
realised now that for the first time for many years, 
his sense of certainty, of mastery in the conduct of 
life, had deserted him. The sndden consciousness 
of a weakness of character where hitherto he had 
least expected to find one, was alarming, but 
strangely, it was also sweet. Now, he reflected, he 
was, at least, being honest with himself. It was not 
to apologise for an imagined breach of manners 
that he had revisited the office, but to see her. It 
was ecstasy to face the truth, to hug the shame and 
the glory of it to his heart. He tried hard to ban¬ 
ish sentiment and to think, but except by fits and 
starts he had to confess himself incapable of con¬ 
secutive reasoning. In one such moment of clear 
comprehension he called himself a fool and inquired 
ironically where all this would lead him, but before 
he could profit by the question the mood passed 
and left him once again a drifting prey to sweet 
emotion. There arose before his eyes, unsummoned, 
a series of pictures, dim in outline but by so much 
the more alluring, of Miss Linnet at her typewriter, 
Miss Linnet smiling, Miss Linnet turning away her 

4 ? 


An Unknown Quantity 43 

head. Even his feelings were no longer consecutive. 
Memories jumped and jostled, certain notes of her 
voice echoed in his ears, repeating the same phrases 
over and over again. Something in him refused 
definitely to look ahead. The present was enough, 
he would be blind, for once, to possible develop¬ 
ments. Not for a moment did he dream of con¬ 
necting his present state of mind with the mental 
discomforts so lately occasioned by his visit to 
Stonechurch. The conversation with his mother 
that he had reported with such solemnity to Agatha 
had passed from his mind, held no portion of his 
present thoughts, nor did it occur to him to reflect 
that the ground once ploughed is ready for seed 
scattered by stray winds as well as for that dropped 
by the careful hand of the husbandman. 

He had stopped in the Strand to buy paper and 
pencil and he sat down now on a seat close to Cleo¬ 
patra’s Needle intending to pour his impatience 
into a letter. The words came easily enough, but 
after the first paragraph he stopped, tore the sheet 
in two, and flung the pieces from him. The pros¬ 
pect of waiting at least twenty-four hours for a 
reply maddened him. It would probably be longer, 
he decided, and worked out in his mind every detail 
of the postal process. He could not hope that the 
letter would be delivered the same evening, it was 
too late for that: no, it would arrive by the first 
post in the morning, and she might have left home 
before it came. In that case he would have to wait 
a whole day before she could even see what he had 
written. Again, suppose she did get it before she 
started for work it was hardly likely that she would 
answer it at once. Fantastic schemes flashed 


44 An Unknown Quantity 

through his brain. A telegram? a messenger boy? 
He had enough sense of humour left to laugh at him¬ 
self for the thought. Still, he must know. How 
could he face another day without certainty? Sud¬ 
denly he looked at his watch. A quarter past four! 
she would leave the office, probably, about five—at 
the earliest four-thirty. Clapham Junction, she 
had said, how on earth did one get there? Vaguely 
he seemed to remember that one passed it by what¬ 
ever route one took out of London! How absurd 
not to know so simple a thing! In irritation at his 
impotence he forced his mind to the problem and 
the certainty of Waterloo came quickly to his brain. 
It was pretty safe, he decided, to assume that she 
would make for the Charing Cross Tube Station, so 
that if only he could intercept her there would be 
a clear five minutes for conversation. He jumped 
up, flung the writing-pad over the balustrade into 
the river, and hastened up the short, steep hill into 
the Strand and onwards toward Covent Garden. 

No sooner did he reach the street that already had, 
for him, a look of glamour about its dingy office 
fronts, than he was confronted by another difficulty. 
He must wait some considerable time, possibly a 
whole hour, and how in the name of Fortune did 
one ‘‘hang about’’ in a public thoroughfare? The 
numerous detective stories of which, in his moments 
of leisure, he was a devoted student, made light of 
such elementary manoeuvres and he had always 
been accustomed to accept, uncritically, their ver¬ 
dicts on points of this description. Faced by the 
actual necessity, however, he discovered that to 
watch a given spot in the middle of London was a 
task demanding a degree of diplomacy almost 



An Unknown Quantity 45 

superhuman. He dared not walk farther than the 
two ends of the street for fear she might, during 
one of his temporary absences, escape unseen. 
Shops of the ordinary sort there were none, and it 
was impossible to simulate an absorbing interest 
for long in the windows of the Law Stationer, the 
Catholic Warehouse, the publisher’s ‘‘Town De¬ 
partment,” and the motor showroom, that shared 
the length of the road between them. Twice he 
paced the full extent of his beat with an eye slewed 
round towards the doorway through which she must 
come. In the course of his third progress he fan¬ 
cied, erroneously, that a distant policeman was tak¬ 
ing an especial interest in his movements, and he 
was about to abandon his vigil in despair when a 
passing newsvendor came, providentially, to his res¬ 
cue. Hastily buying an early Pall Mall he took up 
a position in a neighbouring entry and attempted to 
assume an expression of interest in current hap¬ 
penings sufficiently absorbing to convince the casual 
wayfarer that he had been rooted suddenly to the 
pavement in an access of excitement, and that 
nothing could move him until he should have mas¬ 
tered all the major and minor questions of the day. 

To skim through every column of the Pall Mall 
Gazette —including the “Clubman’s Note Book”— 
is not, in ordinary circumstances, a lengthy business, 
but Evelyn found that by interspersing his con¬ 
sideration of the news (in the process of which, by 
the way, he comprehended not a single line nor even 
a sentence) by hurried glances towards the all- 
important doorway, he could promise himself occu¬ 
pation for a full hour at least. Now that his mind 
was set at rest on the point of accounting for his 


46 An Unknown Quantity 

prolonged presence in the street, he began to be 
tortured by fresh doubts. Was there, perhaps, 
another entrance hidden in a back street, an en¬ 
trance reserved for the use of the staff? He turned 
sick at the thought and was on the point of rush¬ 
ing, at top speed, down a neighbouring alley to find 
out, when the sight of two obvious clerks emerging 
publicly from the building reassured him. The in¬ 
cident cheered him further by the promise that it 
gave of an approaching end to his vigil. From 
every block men and women began to issue in 
increasing numbers, the latter, he noticed, for the 
most part, in coui^les. A new fear came to him: 
suppose Miss Linnet had a friend! All his plans 
had been based, hitherto, upon the assumption of her 
temporary isolation. If there were two of them he 
could not possibly make advances. There would be 
two of them, of course there would, how idiotic of 
him not to have thought of that before! Typists al¬ 
ways went home with friends. Still, she was so dif¬ 
ferent, perhaps in her case the rule would be broken. 
He looked at his watch. Just on five o’clock; surely 
she must be coming soon! The street was emptying, 
everybody was going home. All at once his heart 
jumped into his throat. There she was! alone, walk¬ 
ing quickly towards Charing Cross. He had been 
right, after all. Through the surging emotion of his 
excitement he could not help being conscious, mo¬ 
mentarily, of a distinct beat of triumph that his plan 
had worked out to a nicety. For a moment his 
courage left him, then he recovered his determina¬ 
tion, dropped his paper, and started in pursuit. 

As he rapidly overhauled the retreating figure he 
noticed, with a thrill of pleasure, how well she 


An Unknown Quantity 47 

walked. What sturdiness and yet what grace; how 
entrancing a movement of the shoulders swinging, 
boy like, in harmony with the whole body. Pleasure 
in the sight and a semi-conscious desire to delay the 
crisis of the adventure, kept him, for some few 
yards, behind her. As the moment approached 
for him to work out in action the daring imperti¬ 
nence of his imagination, he was conscious, once 
again, of a sinking sensation in the pit of his 
stomach. For another few yards he put off the de¬ 
cisive moment, though he knew that if he did not 
speak to her before they plunged into the noisy 
desolation of the Strand, he would not speak at all. 
He must use to the full the advantages of quiet re¬ 
moteness that the present offered. 

Had he but known it Miss LinneFs thoughts were 
pursuing a road not far removed from his. She had 
caught sight of his lurking figure from the corner of 
her eye as she stepped from the doorway of Messrs. 
Hope, Cosser and Norris, and she had fully ex¬ 
pected that by this time he would have overtaken 
her. Imperceptibly she slowed her pace, though 
more she could not, in deference to self-respect allow 
herself to concede. To look round would be vulgar, 
besides it might lead to distressing embarrassments. 
She hardly knew him well enough to stop with a 
^‘Well, fancy seeing youV^ and yet to ignore him 
would, she felt, at the present important stage of 
their intimacy, be impolitic and unkind. The imme¬ 
diate future must be left entirely in his hands. 

Evelyn quickened his walk. He decided that at the 
next lamp-post he would speak. Some such artificial 
spur was necessary to goad him past his nervous¬ 
ness. He was close behind her now and still she 


48 An Unknown Quantity 

went straight on. He was conscious again of the 
peculiar sensation he had experienced previously in 
her room. It seemed to him as though he had al¬ 
ready said the words that were on his tongue, as 
though he, as a third person, were listening to the 
voice of a detached materialisation of himself. The 
lamp-post was close beside him now, a few paces 
only in advance. He nerved himself for the supreme 
elfort and came level with her. 

‘‘Good evening. Miss Linnet; do you mind if I 
walk with you ? ’ ’ 

“ Oh! I didn T see you, what a turn you did give 
me 

“I won’t if you’d rather I didn’t.” 

“Oh, I don’t mind.” 

His tongue was dry in his mouth. For a second it 
flashed through his mind to treat the meeting as 
casual, but the heat of his desire burned the half- 
grown pretence out of him. Instead he turned to her 
and spoke in a voice that trembled. 

“I couldn’t wait, I must know for certain; I’ve 
been thinking all afternoon about what you said!” 

“What was that?” 

“That you’d think about coming out with me.” 

“Well, I said perhaps.” 

‘ ‘ But I want more than perhaps, I want to know: 
you can’t imagine what it means to me.” 

“You are silly!” 

“I’m not, I’m dead serious, will you?” 

She paused a moment, then: 

“All right, if you really want me to.” 

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “You 
darling,” but he controlled himself with an effort. 


An Unknown Quantity 49 

Instead he took her arm which she yielded without 
a word, and laughed happily. 

‘ ‘ That’s splendid! now, when ? ’ ’ 

“I say, you do go ahead, donT you?” 

‘‘Well, if you were as excited as I am you^d go 
ahead too; how about Monday ? ’ ’ 

“I can’t say, really; I’ll write and tell you.” 

“No, tell me now; I shan’t sleep a wink until I 
know.” 

She made a great pretence, for a moment, of pon¬ 
dering. “I think Monday would be all right.” 

“How glorious! now what do you want to see?” 

“Oh, anything.” 

“A revue?” 

“Yes, that would be ever so nice.” 

“I’d better fetch you from the office.” 

“No, don’t do that, I’ll meet you somewhere.” 

“Piccadilly Circus Tube Station?” 

“x\ll right.” 

“Can you manage a quarter to seven? that’ll give 
us time to get something to eat.” Visions of a quiet 
dinner in Soho filled him with ecstasy. 

“I’d rather not do that.” Eeal shyness overcame 
her for a moment. 

“Why not?” 

“No, really not.” 

“Oh do, I shall think you don’t trust me.” 
“Silly!” 

“Keally I shall; do.” 

“No; I’ll meet you in time for the show.” 

She was evidently determined, and he had enough 
good sense left to see that it would be bad policy to 
press her unduly at so early a stage. Still, he was 
disappointed. 


50 


An Unknown Quantity 

“Well then, a quarter to eight, outside the 
Piccadilly Circus Tube. ’ ’ 

“All right/^ 

1 He pressed her arm and they walked on in silence. 
;When they came to the Strand she stopped. 

“I must go now/^ she said. 

“Mayn^t I come to the station with youT^ 

“Please don’t; I expect I shall meet the young 
lady I go home with.” 

The phrase was horrible, but in his present con¬ 
dition of elation it caused him but a passing pang 
of discomfort. 

“Agirll” 

“Yes.” 

“Sure?” 

‘ ‘ Of course! how silly you are! ’ ’ 

“It’s only because I’m so excited.” An emo¬ 
tional note crept into his voice. 

“Bye-bye, Monday, a quarter to eight; don’t for¬ 
get.” 

“ As if I should. ’ ’ 

He held her hand and sought for further words 
that would not come, and while he stood thus silent 
she slipped from him and vanished into the dense, 
moving crowd of the street. 

He stayed there for a while with unseeing eyes 
fixed upon the jostling pattern of men and women 
before him, then he turned and walked back along 
the way they had come together. A half-uncon¬ 
scious feeling of delicacy prevented him from mak¬ 
ing any attempt to follow her, and, consequently, he 
did not see her meet another girl at the corner of 
Villiers Street, who hailed her from the curb as she 
darted through the traffic. 


An Unknown Quantity 51 

^‘What a time youVe been!’’ said the waiting 
figure rather peevishly. ‘‘I’ve been standing here 
ever so long! ’ ’ 

“I’m sorry, dear, but old N. kept me hanging 
round.” 

“AVho was that I saw you with before you crossed 
the road?” 

“Oh, that? A boy I met at the office.” 

“It wasn’t George!” 

“No.” 

“All right, don’t get snitfy! I’m sure I don’t 
want to go poking into other people’s affairs; you 
can keep your secrets for all I care.” 

“It isn’t a secret!” 

“What are you taking me up so short for, then? 
I’m sure I wouldn’t have spoken, only I thought, 
seeing that you and George-” 

“Oh, come along, Hilda, do! we shan’t get home 
tonight.” 

Compared to the rather shrill, loose voice of her 
friend. Miss Linnet’s tones would have sounded to 
any third pair of ears, unprejudiced in her favour 
though they might have been, refined, indeed, and 
quiet; and as the two girls pushed their way into 
the underground station some such comparison took 
shape momentarily in Miss Linnet’s own brain. As 
she realised the direction her thoughts were taking, 
she drew back fearfully; never before had she ap¬ 
proached so near even to the outer gates of analysis 
and introspection. She tried to put the thought 
from her, but it recurred despite her efforts. She 
didj somehow, to-night, feel “superior” to her 
friend: certainly she had no desire to discuss her 
new acquaintance with her. George was different: 



52 An Unknown Quantity 

Hilda wouldn’t understand Mr. Eendle. She wasn’t 
sure that she understood him herself, but in a vague 
way she was excited and pleased. 


II 

The next few days were not, for Joyce Linnet, 
filled with any peculiar sense of impatience. She 
did, indeed, catch herself, now and again, thinking 
of Rendle, but it was with an inclination to laugh at 
his earnestness rather than to consider him seriously 
as a suitor, that she did so. She had met what she 
described to herself as “his kind’’ so often, that the 
sense of adventure, if indeed for her it had ever 
really existed, was beginning to w^ear just a little 
bit thin. After all, that sort of fellow meant noth¬ 
ing. She supposed there must be, about a girl at a 
typewriter, something particularly attractive to 
men. She had never been accosted in the street, but 
on several occasions visitors to the office had made 
advances of a hesitating kind to which she had lent 
an ear, at first timid, later excited, finally tolerant. 
Nor had any harm ever threatened her from such 
casual acquaintanceship. In the beginning, cer¬ 
tainly, she had taken the gifts and entertainment of 
these friends with a consciousness of slightly pleas¬ 
ing apprehension induced by the reading of novel¬ 
ettes, a readiness, almost a willingness, to find them 
the bold, bad seducers they ought, according to every 
canon of popular fiction, to be; but when, after one 
or two expeditions with such casual swains, she 
found that their amorous intentions envisaged noth¬ 
ing worse than a kiss demanded and given, her fears 


An Unknown Quantity 53 

gave way to feelings less romantic, and it would 
have caused her real surprise to find her virtue 
actually in danger. But because she rehnquished 
the forebodings that at first she had entertained with 
sensations composed almost as much of pleasure as 
of fear, she allowed herself to retain one illusion and 
to make one rule. To theatres she would go with any 
man who was not physically repulsive to her, but to 
accept meals from strangers must remain a for¬ 
bidden indulgence. In her code of social behaviour 
and in that of her ^‘lady friends’’ a ‘‘show” had no 
ulterior meaning, but a restaurant was held to be an 
altogether different thing, a dangerous place with 
wine and soft lights and perilous allurements. Be¬ 
sides, you never knew w^here a fellow^ might take 
you, and you might suddenly find yourself mixed up 
with the knives, and forks, and people staring. . . . 

So it was that though Joyce had no fear of Evelyn 
Rendle she stood by her determination not to dine 
with him. She liked him. She would never, other¬ 
wise, have consented to go to a theatre with him, and 
she felt instinctively that he w^as ‘ ‘ all right. ’ ’ Prob¬ 
ably he would take her out three or four times and 
then cool off, or he might, of course, get a bit 
‘ ‘ fresh. ’ ’ Such a thing had never happened to her, 
but there was always a possibility that one of these 
days she might be mistaken in a man and then she 
would have to give him the “go-by” sharp. The 
prospect held no terrors for her, trust her to send a 
chap to the right-about if he was a wrong ’un. In 
whichever w^ay things worked out she reckoned on 
being finished with him before the summer. 

That Joyce should have reached so definite a con¬ 
clusion show^s that she was a thoroughly sophisti- 


54 


An Unknown Quantity 

cated person. Although she was only nineteen she 
had lived too long in an atmosphere thick with the 
discussions of ‘‘boys,’’ to be otherwise. Her emo¬ 
tions had never been roused, but they were in a con¬ 
stant condition of titillation. Living with her friend 
Hilda Peacey and having no intimates but Hilda’s, 
she heard little tall^ that was not connected directly 
or indirectly with that subject, and early slipped into 
the habit of talking and thinking along the same 
lines. There nad been times when she did feel 
“different” from Hilda, did get a little bit tired of 
the long unvarying confidences, did find herself half 
dreaming of worlds other than that of the 
“Junction,” but being a sensible person with limited 
prospects, no parents, and few friends—even the 
shrill, blatant, good-natured Hilda was an intimate 
of accident rather than selection—she soon saw that 
life could be made tolerable only by doing as the 
“Junction” did. Therefore she took to herself a 
“boy” in the sense understood by Hilda, a per¬ 
manent background to the occasional, harmless 
romance offered by amorous strangers. They might 
stand to her, indeed, for the partial realisation of 
dreams, but George Dendy was, beyond doubt, the 
reality of life. She never pretended either to herself 
or to him that she was passionately in love, any such 
experience she would probably have considered not 
quite “nice,” but as it was certainly necessary to 
have somebody to fall back upon, she decided that he 
would do. A touch of the piquant was added to the 
situation by the fact that Hilda was just a little bit 
jealous. George had originally been her friend, she 
had been out several times with him and had begun 
to look upon him as her property until one evening 



An Unknown Quantity 55 

at the ‘‘pictures’’ he had been introduced to Joyce. 
His disloyalty had soon been apparent, and parties 
starting d trois had soon developed into new outings 
d deux with the pattern changed. Hilda had been 
compelled to look elsewhere and the necessity had 
left a slight feeling of bitterness in her heart. 
George too had had moments of compunction, but 
had come, finally, to the conclusion that he was 
guiltless. Joyce was ditferent, there was no getting 
away from it, she was smart, better altogether than 
Hilda, more of the lady. Beside her “costumes” and 
blouses Hilda’s jumpers looked vulgar. Her voice 
was softer, she never wore cheap jewellery, and the 
allurements of Henna shampoo pro:ffered so enthu¬ 
siastically by her friend left her unmoved. George 
had probably never analyzed the difference in such 
detail, but he was conscious all the same of its 
presence, and he patted himself on the back, and de¬ 
manded a similar service of his friends as soon as 
he knew for certain that Joyce was “considering” 
him. When Evelyn paid his first visit to the office 
the two had been “walking out” for some consider¬ 
able time. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Satur¬ 
day, Joyce had agreed to reserve for George, and 
though his wooing never reached either the heights 
or the depths of passion, they both felt that the even¬ 
ings spent thus in one another’s company were 
pleasant and, to a certain extent, binding. No doubt 
in a year or two they would marry and settle down 
at the “Junction,” and then in another year or two 
there would be children, and all their friends would 
envy so quiet and respectable a happiness. To Joyce 
no other future seemed worth considering. What 
else, with her chances, could she possibly hope for? 


56 An Unknown Quantity 

what else, after all, even if she could rule her own 
fate, would she choose? George if dull was “nice’^ 
and he was getting good money. Still, deep within 
her, strange desires did occasionally bubble upwards, 
strange longings for scenes and emotions unlike any 
she had, as yet, experienced. Perhaps it was her 
work that took her thoughts away from George and 
Hilda. Kather glorious creatures did sometimes 
come within the area of her vision, and always, 
never far from her ears, was the whispering of a 
world of luxury that could not but be tempting. So 
it was that she had come to look upon her casual 
outings with comparative strangers as a legitimate 
form of recreation, a means of stealing glimpses at 
a life so utterly different from her own. Except as 
an occasional excitement, however, she did not want 
it and it never even occurred to her to lay plans for 
the capture of any of her flitting lovers. It might be 
easy enough to “land’’ one of them, but what would 
she do with him? She was not drawn towards a life 
of guilty splendour; she did not put it from her as 
an alluring temptation for she never felt its attrac¬ 
tion, and as for marriage she did not, in such a con¬ 
nection, even dream of it. She had come to regard 
the scattered flirtations of her life much as a child 
regards the treat of an occasional theatre, much 
looked forward to, enjoyed wildly, and soon for¬ 
gotten. Nor did she feel disloyal to George in per¬ 
mitting such indulgence. What was an evening here 
and there? a kiss given in play, a caress that lasted, 
even in memory, but a few minutes? Nothing could 
move the solid background of George, and she would 
never seriously compromise herself. All the same 
she did not speak to him of the gentle adventures 


An Unknown Quantity 57 

that came her way; he might not understand and it 
would be so difficult to explain. Nor did she mention 
them to Hilda who, still sore as the result of what she 
considered an unfriendly act, might, good-natured 
though she was, rejoice at so fine a chance of making 
trouble. 

The Thursday therefore, and the Saturday, of this 
particular week passed for Joyce with the easy 
monotony of routine. George was as pleasant as 
usual, no more exciting than she had expected, but 
no less so for the prospect of a Monday evening 
to be spent with her new friend. There was just 
the pleasant element of ‘‘looking forward’’ that she 
had come to take for granted in connection with all 
her casual encounters, but no more. 


Ill 

To Evelyn, on the other hand, the week seemed 
endless. His life became a chaotic whirl of emotions 
and thoughts. What power of consistent reasoning 
remained to him was exhausted upon the strategy of 
the coming adventure. He planned and pondered 
schemes as though his whole future depended on 
them. Finally he decided to take seats at a theatre 
removed in situation as far as possible from the 
neighbourhood of the river and Waterloo Station, 
and reasonably inaccessible by the various under¬ 
ground railways of London, hoping thereby to give 
to his ultimate proposal of a taxi after the theatre, 
an appearance, at least, of common sense. When, 
however, all possible practical steps had been taken, 
he found himself a prey to disturbances of a more 


58 An Unknown Quantity 

purely sentimental nature. He found to his chagrin 
that work was impossible. Friday was unbearable, 
Saturday almost as bad, Sunday more tolerable only 
because it brought him within measurable distance 
of Monday. But with the softening of the pangs of 
expectation came other, worse phases of mental 
torture. He began to doubt whether she would 
really come, whether even if she did, they would 
succeed in meeting, whether she would enjoy herself, 
whether she would allow him to see her home, 
whether, finally, it would be wise, upon this first 
occasion, to give his love-making definite form. 
Every moment of the evening was rehearsed in his 
imagination, every aspect possible and impossible of 
their relationship examined and re-examined, 
though the wisdom of encouraging the growth of any 
relationship at all he never even questioned. In this 
first week of the first overpowering emotion he had 
ever experienced, he was incapable of envisaging the 
future or of passing judgment upon the immediate 
past. The discovery that he could think only of one 
person, of one set of circumstances, was, of course, 
staggering. Up to the present his absorption in his 
work and in his friends had been complete. He had 
claimed for himself a power of detachment, a faculty 
of concentration. Hitherto nothing had seriously 
interfered with his application to the life he had 
chosen, and in the absence of real danger he had be¬ 
gun to believe in his invulnerability. Like many 
young men who have never been deeply moved he 
had formulated for himself a creed the central tenet 
of which was “I believe that the man who yields to 
his feelings is no longer a man. Emotions must be 
made good servants that they may not become bad 


An Unknown Quantity 59 

masters.’’ In the light, therefore, of the new ex¬ 
perience that had come so suddenly upon him, he 
could not bring himself to make the altogether 
courageous gesture of renunciation, to tear down, 
brutally, the flag he had so flauntingly nailed to his 
mast. Half admitted, the suspicion may have come 
to him that he was ‘^bowled over,” “swung off his 
feet,” but he w^ould not, could not, declare so much 
openly to himself. Therefore he compromised, us¬ 
ing the same weapon of deception that has served so 
many in a like dilemma. This new thing that had 
dawned for him must be regarded as “experience,” 
“copy”—he could, of course, end it at will, but he 
must first extract its essence, use it. T^ile it 
lasted—and here insidiously crept in deceit—^he 
must taste it to the full, surrender to it that ulti¬ 
mately he might become all the more its master. Art 
must draw food from feehng as well as from brain. 
And so, happily quit of conscience, he submitted to 
the queer, tortured delight of waiting. 

Meanwhile he saw nothing of his usual friends. 
The idea of the studio, hitherto such a haven, was ' 
faintly distasteful. He would, he felt, be strange; he 
might betray himself. The comments of “Bunny,” 
the cynicism of Liell seemed, in imagination, intoler¬ 
able. Therefore he kept away from Swan Walk, and 
Jimmy asked in vain of his friends what had become 
of Eendlef A curious shyness, a faint feeling that, 
at this stage, he could not unburden himself, kept 
him even from Agatha, the Mother Confessor of his 
own phrase, who had as a rule such power to soothe 
him, who showed such willingness to laugh not only 
at but with him. It was strange, however, that in 
opposition to this disinclination for the society of 


6o 


An Unknown Quantity 

his usual intimates, there did come a fleeting desire 
to see his sister Rachel, one of his few links with the 
world of London beyond the bounds of Chelsea. He 
went so far as to call at Wilton street, but found that 
she and her husband were still abroad. The half¬ 
hearted desire for family intimacy passed with the 
slight shock of his disappointment, and his intention 
of writing never survived the walk back to Ebury 
Street. 

On Monday evening he changed, after much pon¬ 
dering upon the tactical wisdom of the action, into 
a smoking-jacket, and took up his position a good 
quarter of an hour before the time arranged. Now 
that the actuality was about to be his he was torn by 
the forces of reaction. He confessed to himself quite 
frankly that he was frightened; the sight of couples 
arm in arm gave him, now, no pleasure; he longed to 
be alone and wished almost that she would fail him. 
And then, as suddenly as the mood had come, it was 
gone again and he walked impatiently to all the en- 
' trances of the station, his heart thumping Avith 
terror at the imagined possibility of her defection. 

At the very moment of the half-hour he saw her 
and a great wave of happiness broke over him. She 
came to him with a smile, welcoming but shy, and he 
noticed, with a sensation of approval, that she had 
made no effort to adorn herself unduly. She looked 
neat, ‘‘trim,’’ he decided was more the word, and he 
noticed again about her walk that entrancing, almost 
rippling sway that had before so held his eyes. 

Their greeting was banal. 

“I do hope you haven’t been waiting long!” 

‘‘I’ve only just come.” He lied with enjo^unent. 


An Unknown Quantity 6i 

pleased at his power over her, at his ability to pat 
her so qaickly at her ease. ‘^As a matter of fact,’’ 
he continaed, ‘‘we’re very early, shall we walk?” 

They moved, arm in arm, ap Shaftesbary Avenae. 
He foand her scarcely recognisable in her new 
armoar of shyness. Something was holding her 
back from speech, what, she hardly knew herself bat 
felt sarprise at so strange a mood. To Evelyn the 
discovery of this new side to her was pare delight, 
not that he had ever, for a moment, thoaght her bold 
or immodest, bat in the atmosphere of her work¬ 
room she had been so perfectly at ease, qaick to take 
his words and to seize her tarn at speech, even when 
her answers had been in the qaeer clipped, anelo- 
qaent langaage of her tradition. Now, in the street, 
she barely opened her lips, bat she smiled and, once 
at a crossing, looked ap at him. What talk they had 
he made. 

“Yoa mast have had an awfal rash to get here,” 
he said. 

“Oh no, it’s qaite easy, I came ap on the has.” 

“Have yoa had anything to eat?” 

‘ ‘ Kather! I had some tea. ’ ’ 

“I still wish yoa woald have had something with 
me; I was lonely, besides, I half believe yoa don’t 
trast me. ’ ’ 

“I don’t like going oat that way.” 

The sense of her essential innocence gave him a 
strange pang of delight; he felt strong, saperior. 

“I’m not really sach a terrible person, am I?” It 
was then that she looked ap at him, bat her answer 
was lost in the clatter of passing traffic. 

In the theatre she grew more talkative. The an- 
familiar laxary of stalls, the feeling of him there in 


62 


An Unknown Quantity 

evening dress beside her, instead of keeping her 
silent, gave her confidence. She liked him for having 
changed his clothes; dimly she felt that by doing so 
he had shown respect for her. She laid aside her 
shyness and spoke unprompted, telling him of her 
life at the office, of Hilda, of her lodgings, her pleas¬ 
ures, her quaint little inexperiences. When first he 
had seen her he had thought of her as rather inde¬ 
pendent, rather sure of herself. The black hair, the 
pallor, had given her, in his imagination, an air al¬ 
most classical, a look of repose, but he found her now 
clinging, soft, inexpressibly appealing. He was 
right too, he told himself, about her voice, there was 
no real cockney in it, no sign of the hideous 
‘Hwang,’’ only a hint of something suspect that gave 
it charm, a strange turn of speech now and again, a 
phrase that on other lips would have shocked his 
underlying fastidiousness, but that, in her, pleased 
him by its very individuality. 

Not for a single moment was he conscious of the 
stage. He heard himself laughing at jokes of which 
he had not understood one word, applauding scenes 
the very appearance of which he could not have de¬ 
scribed. During the whole of the evening his mind 
was occupied with the thought and the sensation of 
her who sat by him: when she laughed so did he, 
with her applause his, almost of its own accord, was 
one. Once, under cover of a song, she leaned to 
whisper a comment, and he felt the brushing of her 
hair upon his cheek, and his heart jumped at the 
contact. 

As the last act drew towards its noisy finale he 
made groping movements about the floor at his feet. 


An Unknown Quantity 63 

‘‘Shall we move before the crowd begins?’’ he 
whispered; “we shall get away more comfortably.” 

Her heart was with the spectacle, her eyes riveted 
to the stage, but she assented quickly with a nod. 

In the street he found a cab without difficulty, as, 
by means of this early exit, he had planned to do. It 
drew up before them at the curb, and as she saw his 
intention she murmured a half-hearted protest. 

“We can go just as easily in the Tube; it’s such 
an extravagance to have a cab.” 

“My dear girl, we’re going in comfort; now then, 
in with you.” 

She objected no longer, but silently did as he told 
her. In the dark intimacy of the car self-conscious¬ 
ness seized them both and held them tongue-tied. 
Joyce knew well enough what his next request would 
be, and she knew that when the demand came she 
would yield at once to it. His shyness was strange 
to her; he was outside her experience of men, and 
her instinctive feeling that he was uncomfortable re¬ 
acted on her own customary assurance and kept her 
in uneasy awkwardness. 

For Evelyn the speeding minutes were strangely 
compact of torture and delight. To feel her there 
beside him was joy inexpressible, but his ecstasy was 
still uncrowned and he counted in agony the 
diminishing moments of opportunity. The beating 
of his heart stifled him, the sense of his timidity an¬ 
noyed him but paralysed his will. They sped across 
Piccadilly Circus and no word had passed between 
them. Miraculously the streets cleared themselves 
of traffic before their onset. At this rate the drive 
would soon be over. In Lower Kegent Street he 
forced himself to speak. 


64 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘Did you enjoy it!’’ he asked and cursed his own 
fatuity. 

“Ever so much/^ she replied; “It was awfully 
kind of you.^’ 

‘ ‘ Don’t say that! It wasn’t kind; I enjoyed every 
moment of it.’’ 

“Oh, but it was.” 

“Will you come again some evening?” 

“If you want me to.” 

“If I want you to-!” 

At the words his shyness seemed to snap suddenly. 
The sense of purpose came back to him steady, sure. 
He twisted half round in his seat so that he could 
look straight into her face. As he did so he noticed 
that they were swinging into Cockspur Street from ^ 
Pall Mall. At that moment he said exactly what he 
meant, and the bluntness of his words after the silent 
intricacies of his doubt, almost made him laugh. 

“May I give you a kiss?” 

For a second she said nothing; then from the 
corner her whisper came scarce audibly. 

“I don’t mind.” 

His arm was round her: beneath the thin coat she 
wore his hand could feel the gentle, maddening con¬ 
tour of her breast. He bent to her with hungry 
passion and their lips met. Out of Time and Space 
they pressed together, then slowly he relaxed, but as 
he did so he was conscious that now it was she who 
strained to him, held him there with the whole 
strength of her body, and again they clung unparted. 
Lingeringly he withdrew from her and his voice 
trembled as he spoke. 

“My dear, my dear, I’ve been longing for that 
ever since I saw you first! ’ ’ 



An Unknown Quantity 65 

She was surprised at the depth of passion in his 
voice; a little frightened, too, at the consciousness 
that never before had she held so eagerly a casual 
embrace. 

‘ ‘ Have you ? ’ ’ she asked inadequately. 

‘HVe been hungry for you as I might have been 
hungry for food; I was starving!’’ 

He bent to her again. 

As they bumped across Westminster Bridge he 
leaned back, but his arm was still round her. 

‘ ‘ What’s vour name ? ” he suddenlv asked. ‘ ‘ Isn’t 
•/ ^ 

, it absurd that I don’t know?” 

‘‘Joyce,” she replied. 

“And may I call you Joyce?” 

‘ ‘ If you like. ’ ’ 

“Joyce—darling, I must kiss you again for that!” 

It distressed him faintly that she had not made 
a like inquiry of him. “What are you going to call 
me ? ” he asked. 

‘ ‘ I don’t know; what’s your name ? ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Evelyn. ’ ’ 

“How silly! that’s a girl’s name.” 

“Don’t you like it?” 

“It’s silly!” 

“I’ve got another name—Henry, call me that.” 

She considered for a moment. “I’ll call you 
Harry,” she said at last. 

“Say it.” 

“Harry!” It was the faintest of whispers. 

‘ ‘ Say, ‘ Harry, I like you. ’ ’ ’ 

“Oh, I can’t; really, I can’t!” 

“Don’t you like me, then?” 

“Of course I do!” 




66 An Unknown Quantity 

suppose I must be content with that; and you 
do trust me?’’ 

‘‘Of course. I shouldn’t come with you if I 
didn’t.” 

“And you will come again?” 

“Yes.” 

“Soon?” 

“Perhaps.” 

As they jerked with a crunch of changing gears 
up the inclined approach to the station, he took her 
in his arms again. But this time she drew back 
quickly. The all-revealing glare of the arc lamps 
under the towering roof frightened her from the 
privacy in which she had begun to see visions; the 
night-time emptiness of the great yard, with its glass 
walls sliding into shadow, was vaguely hostile. But 
though she retreated from his arms his words still 
sounded in her ears. No one had ever called her 
“My dear”; George usually called her “Kiddy,” 
and certainly he had never told her he was hungry 
for her kisses. The soul of the novelette reader 
thrilled within her. 

They sat together, a few minutes later, in an 
empty carriage. Evelyn kept an anxious eye upon 
the door, fearful of intrusion, longing for the train 
to start. Suddenly the handle turned and the door 
was half opened, but in a moment a man’s voice said 
something about “spoiling sport,” a girl’s giggle 
sounded faintly, and it was closed. Joyce flushed 
scarlet and turned her head sharply away, but for 
Evelyn a faint feeling of triumph was mingled with 
his sense of disgust at the vulgarity of the words. 

They began to move, and during the short, fifteen 
minutes of the journey no one entered to break their 


An Unknown Quantity 67 

intimacy. They sat together, his arm round her 
waist, her hand in his, her head upon his shoulder, 
for all the world like any other couple speeding back 
to the suburbs after an evening of sentimental dissi¬ 
pation. So little sense of difference was there for 
either of them that Joyce felt faintly disappointed, 
faintly contemptuous to think, that, after all, he was 
just like George. 

In the sky the moon was full, and against the soft 
blue of the night rows of houses stood up as though 
cut out of cardboard. The whole scene was 
theatrical. Evelyn watched the lighted windows 
flashing by; her heart was beating beneath his hand. 
He turned to her. 

‘‘Say something to me,’’ he said, “I long to hear 
your voice; it’s like the bubbling of running water.” 

She lifted her face in sudden pleasure. He wasn’t 
really like George! 

“Is it?” she asked. 

After a short silence he spoke again. 

“Let me look at you; I want a picture of you that 
I can keep in my mind when I’m away from you. A 
living picture, your smile, the swing of your body, 
the adorable little hitch you give to your shoulders 
when you walk.” 

She gave a low laugh. “What a one you are for 
noticing things!” she said. 

The grating of brakes told him that they were 
running into Clapham Junction. He kissed her 
slowly, tasting to the full the sweetness of her lips. 

In the street outside the station he took her arm 
in his. As they walked he felt the need of speech, 
felt too the approaching end of their evening. 


68 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘I wonder if yon know how happy youVe made 
me ? ’ ’ he said. 

‘‘Have IV’ 

He pressed her arm in reply. After a moment he 
continued: 

“I can’t go for long without seeing you! When 
will you come again?” 

“Oh, I can’t say, I mustn’t come often.” 

“Yes, you must; Joyce, you must promise!” 

“Not now!” 

“You’ll answer my letters if I write?” 

“Of course!” 

“Promise me at least that I may see you again 
within a fortnight.” 

“All right.” 

They turned from the main street into a quiet 
road of shabby houses. For Evelyn the moon 
bathed the stucco fronts and decaying gardens with 
magic. As soon as they had gone a few steps she 
stopped and turned to him. 

“You mustn’t come any further,” she said. 

He pulled her round until she faced him squarely, 
took her in his arms and strained her body to his. 
They kissed in silence. At this moment of parting 
his words came thick, stammering; he hardly real¬ 
ised that he was speaking. 

“I can’t let you go,” he murmured; “I can’t!” 

“You must!” she whispered back, and tried with 
her hands to separate his arms. Once more he 
pulled her to him, then he released her body with a 
sigh. As he did so she started away from him: for 
a moment she was frightened. As he turned away, 


An Unknown Quantity 69 

however, she felt, in her newly recovered freedom, 
the old independence return. 

‘ ‘ Cheerio! ’ ’ she said. 

He started forward, but she slipped from him and 
disappeared round a neighbouring corner. 


THE FOURTH CHAPTER 


I 

I ^OR three weeks Evel3Ti found it difficult to think 
- beyond the delightful emotions of his infatua¬ 
tion. He wrote and actually posted absurd letters 
to Verbena Terrace, and worked himself into a 
frenzy of gratification over the quaint, pathetic little 
replies that came back all too seldom for his impa¬ 
tience. He read into the stilted, badly expressed 
phrases of her scattered notes all the eloquence of 
his own adoration, and the provocative innocence 
of her written words drew from him in reply pages 
of protestation that were to Joyce utterly incompre¬ 
hensible, though she felt, as she puzzled over them, a 
faint thrill of pleasure that she could force so much 
from him. His “funniness’^ appealed to her as part 
of his supreme quality of difference. George never 
wrote to her, his slow conunon sense would have 
rebelled at the thought of wasting effort on mere 
letters, for, after all, he saw her every week and she 
knew quite well everything he had to say. Nor had 
Joyce ever reproached him for not writing. But 
though the idea that he should do so had never oc¬ 
curred to her, did not even now occur to her, the new 
potentiality of lovers revealed to her through 
Evelyn’s copiousness was something definitely 
pleasing. 


70 


An Unknown Quantity 71 

Evelyn took her twice again to the theatre and 
though his experiences were, on each occasion, much 
the same, they brought to him satisfaction in no way 
diminished by repetition. True, he discovered in her 
few depths that he had not already sounded or sur¬ 
mised. There was not in Miss Linnet much for any¬ 
one to find, but in his present state he was easily 
deceived over his own emotions, and novelist though 
he was and therefore, in his own opinion, a trained 
observer of persons, he fell an easy victim to the 
illusions he was only too willing to encourage. In 
the fostering of these Joyce was an innocent agent. 
In no way did she ^‘lead him on’^ by means of 
feminine wiles to employ which she was too igno¬ 
rant and, constitutionally, too gentle. In her be¬ 
haviour to him she was as natural as she was in all 
her friendships; slightly more shy, perhaps, than in 
her relationship with George, but quiet, unpreten¬ 
tious, and wholeheartedly pleased in her enjoyment 
of his gifts. It was this faculty in her for extremely 
simple pleasure that tightened her hold upon him. 
It appealed to elements in his nature that he kept 
carefully, perhaps unduly, suppressed in his work. 
His feeling for her had in it so little of the merely 
gross, that he was himself surprised on the few 
occasions when reflection drove him to a mo¬ 
mentary self-examination. Had he been in a con¬ 
dition to develop his analysis he would have realised 
that it was precisely in this that the power of his 
new experiences lay. Living alone as he had done 
for the last two years, hearing and talking the im¬ 
mature intellectual jargon of his generation, he had 
not escaped, had in fact conscientiously avoided 
escaping, adventures of the kind he had confessed 


72 An Unknown Quantity 

to Agatha Biscoe. When he first settled in London 
he had set himself, with the engaging innocence of 
youth, to seek “experience^’ wherever it could be 
found, and to him as to most young men in similar 
circumstances, the word meant one thing only. So 
far as marriage was concerned he had early vowed 
himself to celibacy, but the high tribunal of his con¬ 
science had decided that abstinence from permanent 
ties was of more importance than thoroughgoing and 
painful starvation of the senses. Any profession of 
asceticism ran, indeed, counter to his theories of life 
iind art, and he had believed sincerely that by utilis¬ 
ing to the full his liberty of choice he could increase 
his knowledge of Humanity and obtain sufficient 
satisfaction for his amorous impulses. Disillusion 
was not long in coming. He was too prudent to in¬ 
volve himself in elaborate intrigues and too fastid¬ 
ious to find permanent satisfaction in merely mer¬ 
cenary transactions. He soon found that his high- 
sounding theories too often degenerated into 
momentary encounters in slightly soiled manicure 
establishments, or materialized, at their best, into 
visits but partially satisfactory to gloomy West 
Kensington flats. Into the purely animal relation¬ 
ships thus achieved he failed utterly to infuse any 
high emotional colour, with the result that his 
sudden discovery of Joyce Linnet came to him as 
something fresh and virginal, an experience, in com¬ 
parison with those that had preceded it, but vaguely 
connected with the body. There was about her a 
clinging element, a childishness, that appealed over¬ 
whelmingly to his underlying sentimentality. Had 
he been less completely her slave he would, no doubt, 
have recognised, with a shock of intellectual disgust. 


An Unknown Quantity 73 

a reversion to the conditions of ‘^calf love,’’ but as 
it was he was aware of nothing beyond the supreme 
happiness of finding his whole consciousness in¬ 
volved, for the time being, in the sense of another 
person’s mere existence. Beyond that fact he did 
not, for the present, attempt to reason. 

The snatched and scattered nature of his meetings 
with Joyce kept him in a state of undiminished fer¬ 
vour. He tried hard to persuade her to more fre¬ 
quent intercourse, and suggested that he might see 
her daily when she left the office, but the proposal 
frightened her by reason of the risks involved, nor 
would she accede to his iterated demands for an 
occasional Saturday afternoon. The looming figure 
of George against what was still for her the 
certainty of her matrimonial background, warned 
her to be cautious. She liked her new friend well 
enough, but in her mind, strangely compact of inno¬ 
cence and sophistication, the sentiment of their re¬ 
lationship had, as yet, taken on no colours compa¬ 
rable to those that glowed so brightly for him, and 
she certainly desired no intrigue of even a modified 
intensity. He remained for her a ‘‘nice boy,” really 
a ^^very nice boy,” nicer by far than she had ever 
before discovered in the course of her occasional 
flirtations, but it did not occur to her that he could 
be, or could ever wish to be, anything more. 


II 

It was not until after her fourth evening with him 
that she decided suddenly to put an end to their 
meetings. Had she been asked she would have found 


74 An Unknown Quantity 

it impossible to give a reasoned explanation of her 
determination. Previously these affairs had always 
ended themselves, and originally she had had no in¬ 
tention of anticipating the inevitable ‘‘cooling off’’ 
that Kendel, according to her pathetically experi¬ 
enced logic, was bound in time to show. She would 
at least get all that could be got out of the intimacy 
before it died its natural death. But now she felt 
within her a sudden need for definite action, for a 
gesture of finality. Partly, no doubt, this new con¬ 
sciousness was due to George who, after their last 
visit to the “pictures,” had spoken in a tone of 
greater assertion than he had ever before used. He 
wanted her, he said, to become engaged to him, to 
consider herself bound, and Joyce, sensible, perhaps, 
deep within herself, though not vividly conscious, of 
new and disturbing emotions, had jumped, with 
something like relief, at anything so definite. She 
made no promise then, but she gave George to under¬ 
stand that her consent was a matter of a few days 
only, and they had parted, if not with ecstasy, at 
least with all the mutual pleasure that the com¬ 
pletion of a contract, long regarded as inevitable, 
can give. George and his intentions were not, how¬ 
ever, the only determining causes of her decision. 
They were not even chiefly responsible; they were, 
in fact, little more than a plausible excuse to do 
something that instincts deeper than reason told her 
must be done. The characteristics that had, for her, 
always distinguished Bendle from any man she had 
ever met, were becoming alarmingly exaggerated. 
He was, she felt, taking things too seriously, expect¬ 
ing too much, as she put it to herself. Not that she 
regarded him with dislike or suspicion for so doing. 


75 


An Unknown Quantity 

it was rather that her new knowledge of his feelings 
made him in her eyes faintly pathetic and conse¬ 
quently dangerously attractive. He treated her as 
she had never before been treated, showing to her a 
gentleness that she found strange though none the 
less delightful. She felt that she could trust herself 
to him absolutely. The silences into which he now 
constantly fell surprised, though they in no way 
frightened, her, and even the passion of his kisses 
brought no suspicion of remotely intended villainy. 
No, it was simply that, in the words of Hilda 
Peacey’s vocabulary, he was a ‘‘cure’’ as opposed 
to a “one,” a subtle difference that Joyce expressed, 
with a conscious refinement upon the vulgarity, by 
saying to herself that he was “queer.” She may 
have felt that this quality might have, ultimately, 
the power of awakening “queerness” in herself, but 
she never brought the suspicion to the level of 
definite thought, contenting her conscience with the 
reflection that she must give him the “go by,” be¬ 
cause it wasn’t fair to George. 

Her cowardice, the fear of giving pain, kept her 
from making her declaration until their taxi was 
crossing Westminster Bridge. Then, from the 
depths of his kisses, she whispered her decision. 

“This must be the last one, Harry,” she said. 

Evelyn looked out of the window. 

“Why, we’re not nearly there yet!” he replied, 
unexpectant of her true meaning. 

“I mean I can’t come out any more,” she 
murmured. 

He sprang from her. “Joyce!” he cried, and the 
pain in his voice moved her to half-comprehending 
pity. 


76 An Unknown Quantity 

“Joyce!’’ he said again after a pause, “what do 
you mean! Why? Why?” 

“I’ve got a boy, and—and it’s not fair to him.” 

“And to me?” 

“I’ve promised him to think seriously,” she said, 
avoiding the question. 

He sank back into his corner seat, huddled, shape¬ 
less, almost as though he had been struck a physical 
blow. 

“Oh God!” he moaned, “I might have known!” 
Then with sudden fierceness, “Why didn’t you tell 
me before?” 

“I never thought you’d mind so much.” 

“Didn’t think!” Suddenly he had her in his arms, 
words poured from him uncontrolled. “My dear, 
my darling, don’t you realise what you are to me? 
Have you never realised? Don’t you know I love 
you? I can’t let you go, I can’t!” 

“You must,” she said, even while she held her 
mouth to his kisses. 

“Do you dislike me so much, then?” He knew 
that the question was unreal, unfair, but it was 
forced from him. 

“Of course I don’t!” 

‘ ‘ But you like him better! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I like him very much. ’ ’ 

For a moment he said nothing. 

“You mustn’t be silly!” she continued. 

“Silly!” the word roused him to fury; “can’t you 
see anything but silliness in it? Don’t you see that 
I love you? Do you believe that I love you?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“But you must know!” he beat against the wall 


An Unknown Quantity 77 

of her reticence. “Of course you’ve never really 
wanted me!’’ he concluded bitterly. 

‘‘Don’t, Harry!” she whispered, and her voice 
sounded strange, the words as though they were not 
her own. 

The cab stopped suddenly. Like a man dazed he 
paid the driver and walked by her side to the train. 
She had meant to say good-bye to him here at Water¬ 
loo, but she felt that to do so now would be an added 
cruelty. After all, what difference could another 
half-hour make ? 

In the train it was impossible to talk. An elderly 
man sat in the corner of their carriage holding an 
evening paper before his face over which he glanced 
at intervals with a half-cynical, half-lecherous glitter 
in his eyes, and to Evelyn he seemed like a figure in 
the nightmare of his thoughts. 

At Clapham Junction they left the station not 
arm-in-arm as had been their custom, but with the 
width of the pavement between them. He realized 
with a shock the few minutes that remained to him, 
the few minutes of everything. 

‘ ‘ Are you engaged to him ? ” he asked. 

“No, but I’ve promised to think seriously,” she 
replied, using the subtly meaningful phrase of her 
world. 

His heart leapt with sudden hope, but hope of 
what he could not say. He drew her closer to him 
and took her arm. 

“Then why must this be the end?” he pleaded. 

‘ ‘ Oh, I mustn’t come again! ’ ’ she said. 

His despair flamed up afresh. “I can’t bear it, 
Joyce, if you don’t; I can’t. You must give me 


78 An Unknown Quantity 

time to get used to it; I must see you again, I simply 
must! ’ ’ 

‘‘But IVe promised him!’’ 

“You’ve not promised anything yet; you told me 
you hadn’t. I’m not asldng you to do anything you 
oughtn’t, you know I’d never do that.” 

“Oh, but I have! I’ve promised not to go out 
with anybody else.” 

The finality of her words crushed him. 

“Then you won’t come again?” 

“I mustn’t.” 

“May I write?” 

“What’s the use?” 

“But may I?” 

“I don’t mind.” 

“Will you answer?” 

“Perhaps.” 

“Say you will!” 

“Perhaps.” 

They had reached her corner and she was anxious 
to be gone. “Good-bye, Harry,” she said, “and 
thanks ever so!” 

The words set the crown upon his agony. “For 
God’s sake don’t say that!” he cried. “I can’t bear 
you to thank me! I love you, I love you!” He 
pressed her to him and kissed her fiercely. Only 
when she had torn herself from him and vanished 
did he realise that he could never hold her thus 
again. 


THE FIFTH CHAPTER 


I 

D aylight brought reaction from the terrible 
restlessness that had kept him walldng the 
streets until an hour before dawn. He slept heavily 
without dreaming, and the pang of memory that shot 
through him when he woke brought the compensation 
of a sudden sanity. The physical sense of Joyce 
was, for the time being, absent; not that he kept it 
consciously from him, though to salve his pride he 
strove to persuade himself that he did so, but rather 
that in his present condition of emotional exhaustion 
all power of sensation was temporarily dulled. As 
he stood gloomily at his window watching the driv¬ 
ing sleet, he told himself that this was, must be, the 
end. It was surely better so, for whither would 
these last weeks, otherwise, have led him? He had 
lived over-vividly in the present and he had had no 
plan. He had abandoned himself too completely and 
this was the natural result. How he hated indefinite¬ 
ness! he must recapture the secret of his detach¬ 
ment, for in that alone lay salvation. The thought 
drove him to work, but after an hour of irritable 
scribbling he tore up the paper and threw his pen 
into the fireplace. 

After lunch he tried again, only to find that con¬ 
centration was impossible. As he sat gazing discon- 

79 


8 o An Unknown Quantity 

solately at the dreary, rain-dimmed fagade of the 
houses opposite, the noise of wheels drew his eyes 
idly to the street. A laundry cart was lumbering 
away from the curb, and upon its hood the words 
“Clapham Junction’’ stood out with ironic distinct¬ 
ness. At the sight the half-dammed flood of his 
emotion surged over him with redoubled power: 
memory came back with agonising vividness. The 
house was intolerable, imprisoning. He snatched up 
his hat, slammed into the street, and turned west¬ 
wards towards Chelsea. He must find somebody, 
talk to somebody—to Agatha! The impulse to go 
to her came upon him suddenly: he felt quite clearly 
that above all things he needed to pour himself out 
unreservedly, felt it as strongly as he had felt, for 
the last three weeks, the desire to hug his secret. 
One could say things to Agatha, she would let one 
talk, and in the repose of her drawing-room self- 
pity would lose some of its meanness. 

He turned into Eoyal Avenue and anticipation 
brought relief. Disappointment was, however, in 
store for him: Agatha was not alone. The tiny 
room seemed full to overflowing, though in reality 
there were, in addition to his hostess, but four 
people there. Jack Biscoe, if he did not exactly leap 
to the eye—the idea of Jack ‘‘leaping,” even meta¬ 
phorically, was ludicrous—pervaded with an air of 
ponderous kindliness the atmosphere of the apart¬ 
ment. Near him, upon the sofa, leaning forward 
with an air of almost furtive eagerness, sat Stephen, 
engaged, apparently, in an absorbing discussion with 
his host. In the corner by the fireplace, talking to 
Agatha, who sat as usual enthroned in her armchair, 
stood a little bright-eyed Jewish youth, unknown to 



An Unknown Quantity 8i 

Evelyn, too clean and polished at first sight to be al¬ 
together presentable, as eloquent with gesture as 
with speech, smiling and talking with a constant 
glitter of very white teeth and a caressing softness 
of voice. At his feet upon the hearth-rug with his 
back against the plaster of the mantelpiece, was a 
well-dressed man to whom Evelyn nodded a brief, 
not too cordial, recognition. His name was Peter 
Scammel, a journalist of repute among the ^‘intel¬ 
ligentsia^’ of London, the members of which snig¬ 
gered shamelessly at his exploitation of their 
idiosyncrasies in his books, and continued, unde¬ 
terred by the fear of caricature, to entertain him 
lavishly in their houses, where they hung with 
delight upon his sometimes witty and always scan¬ 
dalous anecdotes of their friends. He lived a life of 
bachelor luxury in an exquisite Mayfair flat, and 
professed, as a result, social and political views of a 
revolutionary tendency. He knew a considerable 
number of very rich people. 

Evelyn walked across to Agatha and drew a chair 
to her side. She smiled a welcome and in the 
warmth of her kindliness he was comforted. His 
sense of disappointment became, at once, less acute; 
already in the accustomed atmosphere of smoke and 
discussion his unhappiness seemed lighter. 

“I don’t think you know each other I” Agatha 
smiled an introduction to the Oriental youth at her 
side. “This is Louis David; Louis, this is Evelyn 
Eendle.” 

Mr. David bowed. “I hear so much about you!” 
he said with an ingratiating smile, “from the admi¬ 
rable Jimmy, but you are not at his—^how do you say? 
—his atelier during my too few visits.” The for- 


82 


An Unknown Quantity 

eign intonation of his voice and the imperfection of 
his English fitted in so well with his appearance 
that Evelyn lost immediately the feeling of dislike 
of which he had been conscious on entering the room. 
David owed, indeed, much of his popularity to the 
fact that his first effect upon strangers was so 
clearly the worst thing about him. 

‘‘You sing, I believe!^’ Evelyn asked. “I have 
heard a great deal about that. ’ ’ 

David spread a pair of deprecating palms. “I 
sing, ah, but that is a plaything!—c’est rien, qa —I 
hum to my little balalaika.’’ 

The other occupants of the room had taken little 
notice of Evelyn’s entry. The talk appeared to be 
general and enthralling, with accompanying under¬ 
currents of whispered confidences. 

“Well, but how much have you actually got, 
Jack?” Stephen was saying. 

“I’ve been promised two thousand, and if I can 
get another three that ought to be enough to start 
on.” 

“I think Cynthia Eenet’s safe for that,” said 
Scammel, ‘ ‘ she’s very much interested, and now that 
we’ve sold the Proletarian to a syndicate she’s got a 
lot of money to play with.” 

“Look here, Peter,” Biscoe rejoined eagerly, “do 
get her to plank down something. I’ve got my eye 
on a site and there’s an old garage already existing 
that we can do a lot with. ’ ’ 

“I’ll do my best: at any rate she’ll get it talked 
about where there is money. After all three thou¬ 
sand oughtn’t to be very difficult.” 

“And then, and then, after the three thousand!” 
interrupted David stretching both hands dramati- 


An Unknown Quantity 83 

cally, ‘‘we have our Stephen's play—isn’t it? the 
gr-r-eat poem for the theatre!” 

“It’s finished,’’ said Langley. 

“Finished! ah, but then you read it to us—yes? 
and I, I have such wonderful designs, I tell you all 
about them, Stephen! ’ ’ He moved mincingly away 
from Agatha to where Jack and Stephen sat to¬ 
gether. “I have such splendid, such gr-r-eat, such 
ugly lines!” he continued; “yes ugly so that they 
cut right into the soul, deep, deep down! gr-r-eat 
irregular rhythms, beaten out—so!” he waved his 
arms dangerously in the confined space. “Un 
laideur dans I’abime de I’etre—n’est-ce pas! one 
supr-r-eme discord!” 

Through the surge of the impassioned monologue 
could be heard Langley’s flickering attempt to 
maintain his importance in the conversation. 

“It’s in cadence,” he said; “a broken cadence, the 
only medium for the imaginative drama.” 

“Ah, then, how splendid! br-r-oken! for my 
masses to interpret!” 

“It interprets itself, Louis.” Stephen’s voice 
sounded sharp. “It’s complete, it stands by itself, 
you mustn’t overload it.” 

“Overload! no, but I make the casket for the 
jewel, it must be worthy, it must make a whole!” 

Stephen turned to Biscoe ignoring the gesticula¬ 
tions of his excited collaborator. “I’m writing an 
introduction, a note for the programme, a declara¬ 
tion of aim. We must get away from traditional 
form. The break has come in lyric verse, it must be 
forced into the drama. Imagination cannot breathe 
in the old clothes, only by giving it the freedom of 
the broken cadence can we-” 




84 An Unknown Quantity 

The rest of the sentence was lost in the shrill 
downpour of David’s renewed eloquence. He turned 
to the room in general with a flourish of gesticula¬ 
tion. 

‘ ‘ You shall see and judge! ” he cried. ‘ ‘ I bring you 
all my designs, I otfer you the setting I have made 
for that jewel! it is a wonder, you will be 
r-ravished!” 

Agatha, with her air of being raised, always, 
above the contentions of her subjects, brought back 
the conversation quickly, deliciously, to the levels of 
common sense. 

Won’t it all be very expensive?” she asked. 

‘‘Ah! money!” Wilbraham was scornful; “but 
Peter here has the purse—isn’t it?” 

“I’m trying to get one,” replied Scammel, and 
then turning to Jack, “What’s the general plan foi 
your first season? Cynthia’s bound to ask that, you 
know, before she’s willing to help. What have you 
got in addition to Stephen’s drama?” 

“Well, I’ve got a promise of a three-act comedy 
from a friend of ‘Bunny’s,’ and then I thought of 
doing a few revivals—^Wycherly, say, and Aphra 
Behn.” 

“All right, so long as it’s not Shakespeare!” 

Biscoe turned towards the fireplace. “Look here, 
Evelyn,” he said, “how about that play I was speak¬ 
ing of the other night at Jimmy’s? I know you can 
do one if you try. ’ ’ 

Evelyn was by this time caught up once again in 
the full tide of his old interests. The melancholy 
that had brought him seeking helplessly for Agatha, 
had slipped from him as he listened to the ac¬ 
customed voices and saw the familiar figures 



An Unknown Quantity 85 

sprawled about tbe room. For the time being the 
thought of Joyce receded into the background of his 
mind. 

<<IVe got an idea/’ he replied; ^^a jolly good one 
as a matter of fact, and I’ll try and get some sort of 
rough scenario out for you in a few days if I have 
time. What sort of length do you want it!” 

^‘Anything you like to give me, though I’d prefer 
three acts if the thing’ll stand it.” 

‘‘Is the whole of Jack’s repertory to consist of 
plays that managers won’t take!” Agatha inno¬ 
cently enquired. 

“Oh, managers!” sneered Stephen, “my dear 
Agatha, it’s time somebody led a secession from the 
commercial theatre. ’ ’ 

“What we want from you young men,” inter¬ 
rupted Scammel with a sudden verbal assumption of 
age, “is something revolutionary, and we can’t get 
it 1 why, when I was on the reading committee of the 
‘Mummers’ I hunted London for something but 
nothing ever turned up; you know, a really seditious 
play! ’ ’ 

“Wouldn’t a good play be almost as good!” 
queried Agatha gently. 

The quiet irony of the question so carefully 
cloaked in guileless tones, had no appreciable etfect 
upon Scammel, who continued unabashed: “Now 
you, Eendle, you ought to be able to give us the sort 
of thing we want.” 

“I’ll give you something, but I can’t guarantee 
the sedition!” Evelyn laughed back. He was in¬ 
terested now, absorbed in the idea of writing a play. 
He got up from his chair and went over to where 
Jack sprawled on the window-seat, and soon he was 


86 


An Unknown Quantity 

deep in a discussion of details. David, discomfited 
by the loss of bis audience, crossed suUdly to the 
hearth-rug, there to try his powers of declamation 
upon the unmoved and revolutionary Scammel. 
Agatha, silent in her armchair, watched and 
listened, a slight smile upon her lips, kindly, alert, 
presiding. 

Dusk crept into the room filled with the hum of 
desultory talk. From a street-lamp opposite, misty 
light, chequered and patterned with shadow, fell 
through the uncurtained window with a theatrical 
etfect of false emphasis, on to fioor and walls. 

Gradually the drone of the voices grew inter¬ 
mittent; pauses lengthened. Suddenly somebody 
switched on a light and for a moment there was 
silence. Then Langley scrambled to his feet, 
stretching his arms and yawning. 

‘‘I must go,’’ he said. ^‘Come along, Peter; the 
Argus has sent me two seats by mistake for old 
Transome’s first night. You shall help me to make 
up my mind as to whether he’s the worst or only the 
second worst actor in Europe.” 

As the room emptied, Evelyn became conscious 
once again of the purpose that had brought him to 
Royal Avenue, Melancholy crept back into his soul, 
but now with a certain pleasing quality, a sense al¬ 
most of faint perfume. He moved to the fireplace 
and lit a cigarette reflectively. He guessed from the 
look in Agatha’s eyes that she expected him to stay. 

She turned to her husband. ‘‘Go along with 
Louis,” she said; “the walk’ll do you good, and I 
want to have a chat with Evelyn.” 

Biscoe slowly, with much wheezing, pulled himself 
to his feet. “Don’t go till I come back,” he said to 


An Unknown Quantity 87 

Evelyn, “stay to supper, and then we can go into 
the details of that play.’^ 


II 

The words and the new thoughts which they en¬ 
couraged seemed no longer comfortable, and in the 
intimacy of the empty room, Evelyn felt suddenly 
embarrassed. His mind held a confused medley of 
ideas. Consciously his thoughts still ran upon the 
conversation just ended, but behind, beneath, thrust¬ 
ing irresistibly forward, the mood of the early after¬ 
noon was slowly resuming its sway. As the minutes 
passed it took increasing hold upon him, but now the 
fierce bitterness was less, it was almost as though 
he could see his troubles in dramatised form, as 
though they were in the experience of somebody else 
whom he knew very well, whose difficulties he was 
anxious to understand and elucidate. In his ner¬ 
vousness he spoke fir^t of trivial things. 

‘‘So that’s the impossible David,” he said. “I 
thought he was one of Jimmy’s ‘unacceptables’!” 

Agatha smiled. “He’s been received!” she an¬ 
swered, “a lot can happen in a fortnight. Stephen 
likes him; Louis approved of his last book of 
poems.” The words were spoken in a tone too 
gentle for malice, too conscious for innocence. 

“He doesn’t seem a bad little fellow: rather exu¬ 
berant, but intelligent and keen.” 

“Oh, he’s rather fun! Of course ‘Bunny’s’ intact- 
able. We had quite a Jeremiad from her the other 
evening, since when she hasn’t been near anyone. 
She’s the only one, though.” 


88 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘I suppose, if,the truth were known, it^s you 
who Ve done most of the smoothing down?’’ 

‘‘It’s nice of you to think so, Evelyn, but I don’t 
do as much of that as I might, not nearly as much as 
I achieve as a wet blanket. It sometimes occurs to 
me that I exist for the main purpose of pricking 
other people’s bubbles. My friends ’ll get sick of me 
one of these days! ’ ’ 

“Don’t talk such utter drivel, Agatha! You’re 
the one and only person who holds us all together; 
you must know that. ’ ’ 

“Again, thank you: but one must face things 
squarely. I’m of a different generation, you know, 
and I feel sometimes as though I weren’t quite old 
enough for my age. I do hate the ‘young-old’ so 
much; you must never let me become like that, 
Evelyn, promise!” 

“My dear, you’ll never be anything but your de¬ 
lightful, darling self, to whom one can tell every¬ 
thing because you prejudge nothing. Don’t worry 
about your age; I’m not going to fire off proverbs at 
you, but you know you don’t feel old.” 

“Of course I don’t, and I don’t believe I ever shall 
so long as I have friends to interest me in their lives 
when my own gets a little too—well, let’s say 
normal!” 

They both stumbled suddenly into a patch of 
silence. Each was conscious of the constraint that 
lay like a sword between them. Agatha, woman-like, 
took it boldly by the hilt and threw it from the room. 

“Switch off the light, there’s a dear,” she said; 
“it’s so dazzling.” 

The room relapsed once again into warm dark- 


An Unknown Quantity 89 

ness, pierced by the beam of light from the neigh¬ 
bouring street lamp. 

Evelyn sank on to a cushion at her feet. He said 
nothing and she continued. 

‘‘What is itV^ she asked, “something’s gone 
wrong.” 

“How did you know?” He was genuinely sur¬ 
prised. 

“My dear, don’t ask me that unless you want to 
know the worst side of me! I’ve got rather a lot of 
what you hate most—maternal instinct—and if you 
question me about my intuitions you may plunge me 
into a sea of sentiment. Of course I knew.” 

“You are a dear!” he murmured, and sank again 
into a brooding silence. The darkness, the close in¬ 
timacy, the consciousness of a sympathetic listener, 
combined to draw forth his former mood in its full 
strength. The miseries of the last twenty-four 
hours rushed overwhelmingly back. The feeling of 
detachment fell away, tragedy seemed once again un¬ 
bearably personal, and yet at the back of his mind 
lurked the faintest feeling of satisfaction, almost of 
triumph, that he was so affected, so heartbroken. 
He had been so seldom in his life moved, he was so 
prone by temperament and training to analyze and 
group sensations, that the experience could not, at 
once, free itself in his mind from artificiality. He 
lit another cigarette and, after a pause, spoke ner¬ 
vously, looking straight before him into the 
shadowed room. 

“It’s just the coming up against the one thing that 
one can’t fight, Agatha,” he said. 

Her mood of sentiment had passed; she answered 
briskly, a little impatiently. 


90 An Unknown Quantity 

“Eubbish, Evelyn! what do you mean, ‘Can’t 
fight 

‘'One theorises, sets out life in squares, and 
imagines that one can go on eternally moving the 
pieces. Then all in a moment the opponent shows 
his hand. What I mean is that even if one makes 
allowances for what one believes to be every possible 
development, the reality has a quality that one canT 
discount; it just brushes one aside.’’ 

“My dear boy, that’s nothing but surrender. You 
don’t give in like that at—what is it?—twenty-six. 
It’s a chance to show your quality. If a man’s never 
frightened where is the value of courage?” 

“No one’s brave beyond a certain point, Agatha. 
Courage is only possible so long as the power of en¬ 
durance is just ahead of the temptation to give in. 
There’s a breaking-point for everybody, and when 
panic comes it’s almost impossible to stand against 
it.” 

“That’s the shirker’s gospel, Evelyn; youWe 
shirking! Buck up! you’ve got to get on to your 
feet and face things. I don’t know what this trouble 
of yours is, and I’m not going to decide for you— 
you’ve got to do that for yourself—but whatever you 
decide to do, do it; don’t knuckle under to circum¬ 
stance!” 

He shifted irritably. “Oh, don’t think I haven’t 
said that sort of thing often enough! my own words 
have come back to mock me! Can’t you see—it’s 
just that I’ve always been so certain of my life, so 
sure of myself! Uncertainty now brings torture—it 
paralyses me!” 

She leaned forward and put her hand on his head. 




An Unknown Quantity 91 

T\Tien she spoke again the impatience had gone from 
lier voice, replaced by an infinite kindness. 

‘‘Evelyn dear, it^s the first time; what’s the good 
of all your past certainty if it’s never been tried? 
Don’t think I can’t understand, I can; I’ve been 
through it all, and, believe me, it’s worth the 
struggle to come out on the other side.” 

Her words failed to soothe his impatience; he 
shook her hand from his head. 

“Oh, but how, how?” he cried. “I’ve told myself 
all that a thousand times, but it doesn’t help.” 
Then with a sudden spasm of compunction he took 
her hand in both of his. 

“I’ve hurt you, Agatha! What a beast I am, for¬ 
give me! ’ ’ 

“Oh, my dear, don’t be ridiculous! if I’m going to 
be hurt as easily as all that, I may as well give up 
trying to understand my friends. W^e’ve got to a 
point in the argument beyond which there’s no going 
—at present. You’ve told me your side, I’ve told 
you mine. How can we advance? Nothing I say 
now will influence you and you can’t persuade me 
that I’m wrong. I say again as I said just now, the 
only thing you can do is to fight through for your¬ 
self That’s that! and I suppose you feel just as 
strongly as before I spoke, that you’re up against 
something that you can’t get the better of. Well, 
let’s leave it at that. There’s only one thing more 
I can do for you, my dear, and I’ll do it.” 

“And that is?” 

“Let you talk. It’s what you came for really, 
not to hear my foolish answers, but just to pour 
yourself out, now didn’t you?” 

For a moment Evelyn felt the shrewdness of the 


92 


An Unknown Quantity 

hit too strongly to reply; but in a moment the flood 
of his affection for the woman at whose feet he sat 
swept away embarrassment and left him without de¬ 
fences. 

“I^m a selfish pig!’’ he cried. ‘‘Yes, I suppose 
that is what I came for, to bore you, to wallow in my 
own sentimental messes!” 

Agatha threw back her head and laughed. “What 
a wonderful chameleon you are, Evelyn, ’ ’ she said; 
“there’s no end to your moods. WHiy on earth 
shouldn’t you come to talk? There’s not much left 
for the middle-aged except to be the confidants of the 
young, and when they’re chosen, my dear, they’re 
very proud. What’s she like?” 

It was Evelyn now who laughed, and with the re¬ 
lease of his mirth came the full onrush of his con¬ 
fidence. 

“You’re a magician, Agatha!” he cried; “of 
course I’ve known that for a long time, but I didn’t 
realise you were malicious as well! Here you are 
leading me on to tell you the things you know al¬ 
ready with the sole object of letting me make a fool 
of myself! well, at least I shall cheat you of your 
expected applause; I shan’t say ‘How wonderful!’ 
I shall just take you for granted!” 

“Thank you, Evelyn; well what is she like?” 

“She’s everything that, if you weren’t an old 
darling, you’d hate! She’s undistinguished and un¬ 
educated; she wears low blouses in the daytime, 
powders her nose, and I’m not sure that she doesn’t 
flirt abominably! ’ ’ 

His sudden high spirits flamed and sank to embers 
at the words. In a low voice, tense, trembling, he 
added, “But, my God! Agatha, I want her!” 


An Unknown Quantity 93 

The words seemed to echo faint and fainter into 
silence. When Agatha spoke again it was in a voice 
as low" as his had been a moment before. 

‘‘Are yon sure, Evelyn, really sure? isn’t it jnst 
the other thing?” 

He jumped to his feet and started to pace the 
small room. 

“That’s w"hat’s putting me to the torture! just 
that. Not to be certain, ah, that’s the hell of it! 
For the last tw^enty-four hours I’ve been asking my¬ 
self that question, and I can’t get an answer. When 
I’m wuth her I haven’t a doubt, but afterw-ards! 
Oh, that afterwards, Agatha! You see I’ve wanted 
other w^omen, but I’ve never felt like this about 
them; I’ve been hungry for their bodies, but some¬ 
how it’s not her bod}^ I think of, not chiefly: and yet, 
and yet, you see the fact that the others are there in 
retrospect does make a difference—it makes me un¬ 
certain.” 

“You can talk about it all like this, detached, 
critical, doesn’t that weight the balance a little bit?” 

“My dear, it’s the last despairing cry, it’s like the 
drowming man wdio makes his final rational decision, 
w"ho tries to catch the rope before panic sends him 
down. I can think like this, talk like this, to you, 
now, but who know^s whether I shall be able to to¬ 
morrow^? That’s w"hat I meant w^hen I said I was 
up against the reality, the one thing I can’t discount. 
I’m slipping every moment into deeper water, and 
I may soon be floundering at the last gasp! Do you 
remember that talk of ours at Jimmy’s? I boasted 
that I could see round love, and you said that if I 
fell in love all that w^ould go by the board. I told 
you then that it was just that prospect that 



94 


An Unknown Quantity 

frightened me, and it frightens me now, terrifies me, 
because I’m just losing control; it isn’t even a ques¬ 
tion as to whether I can stop myself, it’s do I want 
to stop myself?” 

‘ ^ And she ? ’ ’ 

‘‘Oh, she wants to get rid of me.” 

“And that, of course, makes it worse, puts you on 
your mettle?” 

“But she means it; she’s too innocent to play a 
game. All the things I told you of her are true 
enough, but she’s innocent too, in some things she’s 
like a baby!” 

“Possibly, my dear, but the effect’s the same.” 
After a moment she continued in a louder voice. 
“It all comes back to what I said before, Evelyn— 
you haven’t fought, you haven’t given yourself a 
chance. You must decide one way or the other and 
if you go to her it’s your own look out. I don’t give 
a hang for her commonness nor for the other things, 
and I’ll back you up through it, but don’t be in a 
hurry, don’t burn up at the first spark. Buck up, 
get to work on something, tire yourself out, do some¬ 
thing ! ’ ’ 

“I can’t work; I’ve tried all to-day, and I can’t.” 

“And yet just now, when you were talking with 
Jack, and David and Stephen, she was out of your 
mind?” 

“I suppose she was, for the time being; but she’s 
back now! the reed’s very much bruised, I’m 
afraid.” 

“Still it is a reed! Promise me, Evelyn, that 
you’ll try and buckle to. I don’t mind what decision 
you come to so long as you give yourself a chance 
first. Promise me that ? ’ ’ 


An Unknown Quantity 95 

He sat down again on the rug at her feet and for 
a while smoked in silence. At last- 

‘‘Idl promise/’ he said. 

At supper Agatha displayed so voluble an interest 
in her husband’s theatrical project that even he was 
startled out of his normal stolidity. 

‘‘I’d no idea you were as keen as all this,” he said. 

“Of course I’m keen, darling! I believe that 
we’re going to make our fortunes, and I’m sure 
Evelyn’s going to write a marvellous play.” 

They talked far into the night of plans and details. 
^Hien about two o’clock Evelyn got up to go, Agatha 
went with him to the front door. 

“Do hurry up with the first act, Evelyn,” she 
said. “I am so anxious to hear it.” 


Ill 

For the next few days, Evelyn spent most of his 
time in Chelsea. The society of his friends, if it 
did not, as Agatha hinted that it would, drive out 
entirely all thoughts of Joyce, kept them at least in 
the background of his mind, where they breathed a 
gentle, melancholy fragrance, not altogether un¬ 
pleasant. It was in the moments of his solitude that 
the old pain reasserted itself. Try as he might, and 
in pursuance of his promise he did try, he could not 
lose himself in work. More than two-thirds of a 
new novel lay already written in his desk, but for 
a whole week he did not take it a line nearer comple¬ 
tion : the idea of his play was fresh and exciting in 
his brain, but although he discussed it endlessly with 



g6 An Unknown Quantity 

others, he could not, in the lonehness of Ebury 
Street, get a single word on paper. He haunted the 
studio in Swan Walk, and hung about ‘ ‘ Bunny’s^^ 
two rooms in Flood Street until she began to wonder 
at the persistence of his attentions. 

‘Ht’s my belief,’’ she said one day to Jimmy, 
‘‘that Kendle’s writing a Chelsea novel, and he’s 
studying us at close quarters. It must be that, un¬ 
less he’s got sinister designs on my person!” 

Beverley, who overheard her, snorted disapproval. 
“Both alternatives are deplorable, but of the two 
the first is the more probable and, in the end, I 
should say, the less dangerous.” 

On one occasion he walked all the way to Hamp¬ 
stead to see David, and on another induced Langley 
to tramp with him in the rain to Eichmond soften¬ 
ing the physical discomfort for his companion by 
listening for three hours with an admirable show of 
attention to the poet’s theories on cadence as a 
dramatic form. Wliatever he did, however, to avoid 
solitude, there were long hours during which it had 
to be faced, and then it was that he found himself 
most hopelessly the victim of memory. At first he 
tried to reason himself gallantly back to sanity. 
After all, he argued, why should a single month up¬ 
set the habits and the outlook of years'? Joyce didn’t 
want him, could never want him: she was an in¬ 
cident, why shouldn’t he think himself back into the 
days before their first meeting? Savagely he cursed 
himself and criticised his weakness, but all to no 
purpose. It was as though in the March days he had 
been lying ploughed and ready for the seed which, 
once sown, grew too strongly to be rooted out. He 
had gone lightly into his adventure with no thought 


An Unknown Quantity 97 

beyond his immediate pleasure, and now what he had 
gaily treated as a triviality was become a thing of 
whips and scorpions to lacerate him. 

After the first week he found to his dismay that 
even the society of his riends was losing its power 
over him. As a man enslaved to drugs is driven 
daily to increase the dose, so now he found it 
necessary to be with them for ever longer periods 
before he could force himself to breathe the atmos¬ 
phere of his old interests. The ponderings of his 
lonely mornings gained gradually a mastery over 
him: every day they held to him with increasing 
tenacity, refusing to be dislodged, except by intoler¬ 
able efforts of his will. Less and less did he find it 
possible to take her refusal of him as final, to re¬ 
gard her, as at first he had tried to do, as lost be¬ 
yond his finding; more and more did temptation 
whisper that if he wanted to he could win her back. 
And then, one afternoon there occurred an incident, 
in itself small, but in its effect such as to overwhelm 
the weak remaining barriers of control. He was 
walking across Hyde Park when, suddenly, not fifty 
yards in front of him he saw a figure that brought 
his heart bounding into his throat. The swinging 
walk, the poise of the head, even the curious striped 
coat she always wore! It must be Joyce! She was 
with a young man, his arm in hers, their heads close 
together, hers lifted to his face. For a moment 
Evelyn stood still, then, turning on to the grass, hur¬ 
ried to overtake them. As soon as they were be¬ 
hind him he turned his head. It was not Joyce after 
all. For a second he was conscious of sharp disap¬ 
pointment and then, as suddenly of relief. He 
walked on, but the image of the pair persisted. It 


98 An Unknown Quantity 

was not she, but it might have been; doubtless at 
that moment she was walking so, linked arm in arm 
to that man to whom, in her loyalty, she had sacri¬ 
ficed him. The thought grew, became a torment, 
haunting him with visions of her lifted profile. . . . 

That night he wrote to her, wrote without re¬ 
straint, pouring into words all the anguish of the 
past week. Page after page he filled, until in very 
shame he stopped. How much would she read? he 
wondered, how much understand. Hurriedly he 
closed the envelope and ran to drop it into the pillar¬ 
box before his mind could change. 


THE SIXTH CHAPTER 


I 

TOURING the next few days Evelyn lived for 
-L/ nothing but the postman’s knock. He would 
stand at his window waiting for the delivery, or walk 
up and down the room, incapable of continuous 
thought, restless, almost hysterical. Again and 
again he wrote, leaving, with a strangely methodical 
logic, just enough time between the dispatch of the 
various letters for the possible reception of an an¬ 
swer to the one immediately preceding. Night be¬ 
came hideous. The hours that followed the post¬ 
man’s final visit seemed to him endless, and the 
vision of an age of darkness separating him from the 
earliest possible letter took on the reality and inten¬ 
sity of a nightmare. On one occasion, finding sleep 
impossible, he walked the night through down streets 
that shone in the silence like black canals, thinking 
of nothing, letting his tired brain turn over and over 
like a motor throttled down to its minimum of move¬ 
ment. He went aimlessly, noticing nothing of direc¬ 
tion and surroundings, until he collapsed from 
fatigue a mile beyond Kingston, and watched with 
a vacant stare the arrows of early sunlight above 
the silent river. He returned by train, a strange 
sight, unshaven, white-faced, dull-eyed, and slept till 
evening, only to find on waking that there was still 
no letter and that another night was close upon him. 

99 



100 An Unknown Quantity 

From the pain that came to him in his sudden 
collapse and surrender, he could not find relief even 
in the pose of romance. His brain was numbed and 
the agony was almost physical. The power of con¬ 
trol upon which, hitherto, he had prided himself had 
been, he now realised, nothing but an absence of 
strong emotion, and in the flood that overwhelmed 
him he could find no plank to which to cling. The 
machine had, for the time being, broken down, and 
nothing remained but a jumble of useless wheels and 
pistons washed by the swell into a place of jagged 
rocks. Now and again, in moments of recurring 
sanity he did, as it were from a vantage point, see 
his own floundering form, stood aside in an instant ^s 
detachment and felt a sudden shame, a quick desire 
to laugh at the humiliation of the sight. Such clarity 
of vision, however, shone but for a minute before 
darkness rolled down again obscuring everything in 
the welter of driving cloud. As the days passed 
these tremulous gleams grew less and less frequent, 
and though the pain of his emotions lost some of 
its intensity, the numbness that followed caught his 
will and his brain in the bonds of a paralysis that 
was no less terrifying than the more penetrating 
torments that were its heralds. 

It is more than probable that, had no further com¬ 
plications arisen, the erotic fit would, in time, and 
in a comparatively short time, have passed without 
leaving any permanent scars upon his heart. Fate, 
however, saw to it that the adventure thus promis¬ 
ingly initiated should not die of inanition and pass 
into the banality of forgetfulness. Ten days after 
Evelyn’s first letter of wild reproach and tempes¬ 
tuous importunity, Joyce replied. Why she took it 


An Unknown Quantity loi 

suddenly into her head to send her timid ungram¬ 
matical little note, when all along she had intended 
to ignore the appeals that poured upon her, it is 
difficult to say. When, in the dim privacy of Verbena 
Terrace, she had said good-bye, there had been no 
coquetry in her heart. She had fully intended to 
make the parting and to keep it final. She had felt, 
of course, regret, for Harry was really a nice boy, 
but instinct told her that a break was imperative. 
She had turned again to George with a sigh, as it 
were, of mingled relief and regret. 

Then had come the letters, strange, frightening, 
faintly exciting. Day after day they struck at her 
until, as by bombardment, they weakened her deter¬ 
mination. So frequent were they that it became im¬ 
possible to keep them secret from Hilda, whose eyes, 
as envelope succeeded envelope, grew rounder until 
curiosity, that could be baulked no longer, vented it¬ 
self in caustic comments and hinted queries. 

‘‘ShouldnT wonder if they didnT ’ave to put on a 
special postman for this street soon!” she said one 
day, speaking casually to the corner of the ceiling 
above the faded aspidistra upon the bamboo stand. 
Her voice was harsh, and if she did not exactly drop 
her aitches she appeared to find some difficulty in 
maintaining them constantly in their rightful 
positions. 

Joyce flushed uncomfortably and said nothing. 

‘‘All in the same writing too,” continued her 
friend, “and it isiiT George^s neither.” 

“How do you know it isnT George^s?” flashed 
the other in a voice that made it clear at once that 
it wasnT. 

Hilda tossed her head. “There was a time,” she 


102 


An Unknown Quantity 

replied with emphasis, ‘‘when I knew most things 
about George, including hs writing! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I believe you ’re jealous! ’ ’ 

“Oh, you’d be surprised!” 

Joyce’s eyes were flashing and her cheeks were 
scarlet, but she kept a hand upon her temper. It 
was satisfactory to see how Hilda’s commonness 
“came out” under the stress of heightened feeling. 
Suddenly the desire for a confidante, the longing to 
show off a rather precious possession, came to break 
the tension. 

“Well, they’re not from George, as a matter of 
fact!” 

“As if I didn’t know that! What should he ’ave 
to write about?” Hilda’s idea of love-making erred 
no more than George’s on the side of subtlety. “Got 
another boy?” she queried on a note of expectation. 

‘ ‘ Of course not! ’ ’ Then, after a pause. ‘ ‘ They ’re 
awfully silly! soppy, you know, just look at this.” 
The desire to share could be resisted no longer and 
she passed over to her friend one of the least tumul¬ 
tuous examples of Evelyn’s correspondence. 

Hilda read it to an accompaniment of suppressed 
whistles. “My word! ’e does write nice,” she said 
at last, adding a moment later, “Eegular nut, isn’t 
’e?” 

Joyce nodded. 

Hilda worked as a cashier at a city tea shop and 
her next words were spoken slowly, as though to 
drive home the considered lessons of her daily ex¬ 
perience of life. 

“You be careful of that kind, my girl; they’re all 
after the same thing! ’ ’ 

Joyce felt unaccountably the surge of sudden re- 


An Unknown Quantity 103 

bellion: in the heat of her reply grammar sutfered 
a defeat and she was angrily conscious of being 
momentarily dethroned before her friend. 

^‘Not this one isn’t she replied. 

Hilda ignored the words; busily she pursued her 
own train of thought. 

‘ ‘ Taken you out ? ’ ’ she asked. 

‘‘Once or twice; what about it!’’ 

There was a pause. 

“Look here.” Hilda’s manner was slightly 
truculent. “What about George!” 

“What about him!” 

“Are you leading ’im up the garden, or are you 
doing the square thing by ’im!” 

Joyce tried valiantly to recapture lost ground, and 
to climb once more the slippery hill of superiority. 

“I don’t see what George and me’s got to do with 
you or anybody,” she said. 

“Oh, don’t you! well, I do, and I’m not going to 
see ’im done the dirty on, not by nobody!” 

The fight was too unequal; there was nothing to 
be said, and Joyce, taking the only road left to her, 
beat a dignified retreat to her bedroom, the door of 
which she carefully locked behind her. 

The fire of her anger at Hilda’s criticism was 
still bright, and she sat down at once and wrote to 
Evelyn. Half an hour previously she had had no 
intention of doing any such thing; her motives even 
now were tangled, but action resulted. A sudden 
sense of loneliness had swept over her that no 
memory of George could dispel. Hilda’s recent vic¬ 
tory, unimportant though it had been, gave her the 
feeling of being an outcast from the society of her 
friends, and she turned now impulsively to Evelyn 


104 An Unknown Quantity 

as to an ally. She was conscious dimly that when 
she was with him, she did, in some mysterious way, 
shine with a reflected light, that in his company 
there came over her manner, her speech, even her 
appearance, a subtle but unmistakable difference. 
The picture of past metamorphoses came before her, 
conjured up by the sense of soreness that remained 
from the humiliation of Hilda’s triumph. It was 
not, however, only from a desire to ‘‘have her own 
back” that she wrote her letter. She felt a generous 
impulse to champion her new friend against the im¬ 
putations of villainy that she had found no words to 
counter. Hilda, of course, would know nothing 
about it, which was a pity; still, after all, at this 
moment it was herself, strangely enough, she wanted 
to convince, and how better could she do so than by 
inviting him to a last farewell? This time must be 
the last, on that point she felt determined. If only 
he had been sensible they might have gone together 
a little longer, but that was impossible now that he 
had decided to play the game according to his own 
rules instead of observing hers and those of her 
friends. 

So she argued to herself, but deep down she felt 
glad to think that they would meet again. She 
looked forward in imagination and the vision of 
George faded ghost-like away. What she should say, 
what do, she had no idea. That this writing of a 
letter could possibly change by an inch the normal 
pattern of her life she never dreamed; that the meet¬ 
ing it sanctioned might end in something other than 
a really final “good-bye,” never for one moment oc¬ 
curred to her. She said merely, without any ex¬ 
planation of her prolonged silence, thus strangely 


An Unknown Quantity 105 

broken, that he might meet her at half-past six on 
the following Thursday, that she would look out for 
him. That she had for the last fortnight, “looked 
out’’ for him, but with the object of avoiding his 
possible ambushes, she did not add. On Thursday 
there should be no attempt to escape; she would see 
him once more, would, as she put it to herself, “have 
it out with him. ’ ’ 


II 

They met without words—^he with a hungry sense 
of her that held him silent, she with a quick unex¬ 
pected shrinking from the ordeal of insufficiently 
anticipated emotion. Silently they walked to the end 
of the street and with no greater protest than a 
momentary hesitation, she acquiesced in his hailing 
of a passing cab. Only when they were jolting over 
the worn cobbles did she find her tongue to say half 
timidly, “I mustn’t be late.” 

He made no answer, but turning with a quick in¬ 
take of his breath that was almost a sob, caught her 
in his arms. Again and again he kissed her, gulping 
down, like a drunkard after long-enforced absti¬ 
nence, great draughts of her. Motionless she lay 
against him, surrendering her lips, her eyes, her 
throat, until suddenly, in very uncertainty, she 
laughed, a little broken laugh of shyness. At that 
he found words. 

“Oh, my dear, why have you been breaking my 
heart?” he said. 

‘ ‘ ITave I ? ” There was a subtle note of triumph in 
the question, some underlying, unintended mockery. 


io6 An Unknown Quantity 

“Don’t you know it; haven’t you read my 
letters 

‘ ‘ Of course I have! ’ ’ 

‘‘Joyce! the tortures IVe been through! Why 
didn’t you answer?” 

“I couldn’t; I tried, but I couldn’t think of any¬ 
thing to say.” 

His heart leapt; into the words he read his own 
meaning. 

“Then you did think of me?” 

“Don’t be so silly!” 

He felt a sudden spurt of anger at the foolish, ac¬ 
customed phrase. 

“Why is it silly?” he asked sharply; “why is 
everything I say silly? Can’t you see even yet what 
you’re doing to me? Can’t you realise that for days 
I’ve thought of nothing but you, waited for nothing 
but a letter that never came? I’ve been without 
sleep, without food, without the power to work or 
think! ’ ’ 

The unexpected fury of his words frightened her. 
She didn’t understand him; it was as though some¬ 
one from a strange world was spealdng. But dimly 
she was conscious of flattery, of pleasure at the 
thought that for what she had done or left undone, 
a man could talk like this. It was rather like a 
“story,” like something pleasantly thrilling in the 
‘ ‘ pictures. ’ ’ She said nothing, but made the only an¬ 
swer that she knew, holding up her face to his kisses, 
and at the moment his flash of anger died away in 
a new ecstasy. 

For a few moments he drugged himself with the 
touch and scent of her, striving to persuade him¬ 
self that the ardour of his wooing found an answer- 


An Unknown Quantity 107 

ing fire in hers, refusing to recognise the mute 
passivity of her acquiescence. The need for words 
came suddenly upon him again. 

“You’re an obsession, Joyce!” he said; “you 
madden me, you do with me what you like! Do you 
realise,” he added with a note of bitterness in his 
voice, “that you can turn me round your little 
finger?” 

She smiled upon him pleased but essentially un¬ 
comprehending. 

“Can I?” she queried. 

He continued as though he had not heard her. 
“Why should you have this fascination for me? why 
can’t I escape from you, forget you as I ought to; 
why am I bound hand and foot ? ’ ’ 

She drew away quickly, utterly mystified, but 
standing, instinctively on her dignity. 

“Oh, you needn’t bother about trying to escape,” 
she said, “I’m sure I’m not keeping you!” 

The utter fatuity of the remark, instead of rous¬ 
ing him again to anger, came to him with the bloom 
of an inexplicable charm upon it, the charm that 
ever since his first meeting with her had held him 
bound with the chain of her petty vulgarities. 

He crushed her in his arms. “You darling, you 
darling,” he murmured, “as though I could ever 
want to escape you! I was talking wildly; I’m mad 
with wanting you so long, so terribly long!” 

He said no more, and in a few minutes the cab 
drew up before the terraced pavement that strives 
to make regal the banal approaches to the Albert 
Memorial. In the windless, golden freshness of the 
May evening, the lawns and alleys of the park had 
an air of washed spaciousness that brought to mind 


io8 An Unknown Quantity 

the polite pastorals of the French court painters. 
Eastwards from the grotesque gothic of the monu¬ 
ment the avenue of great trees stretched to a point, 
with an accuracy of perspective faintly satisfying, 
to the distant, glowing, bastion of Park Lane. On 
every side the pink and white blossoming hawthorn 
clustered like jewels in gold-green setting of the 
opening leaves. Evelyn and Joyce, her arm in his, 
wandered vaguely northward, to where before them 
the flat, scenic branches of a cedar spread its para¬ 
sol of shadow over the glowing flowers. On they 
went, out of the square that gives an air of homely 
grandeur to the gigantic Albert, across the Flower 
Walk, through the ‘ ‘ wishing-gate ” of his childhood, 
into the glades and lawns that lie beyond. There 
they sat down beneath a tree and watched for a 
while, unspeaking, the sauntering groups upon the 
grass, the glint of water from the neighbouring 
pond, the warm, red walls and twinkling windows 
of the palace. 

It was he at last who^broke the silence. 

‘‘It’s wonderful to be here with you,” he said. 
“It seems to bring all the magic to a point until 
it’s almost unbearable. In a quarter of an hour 
the dusk will come to turn the tree trunks blue. 
Watch, my dear, and see how softly it blows into 
the branches. One looks in vain for sorcery like 
this in the real country, and finds it, strangely, in 
a London garden. Are you happy, Joyce?” 

“Yes,” she murmured, and thought how much 
nicer a place this was than Battersea Park, quieter, 
grander, more desirable. 

At the word he slipped his arm round her waist 
and drew her to him. She seemed to him to grow 


An Unknown Quantity 109 

in beauty as the darkness fell. In those quiet min¬ 
utes beneath the tree he was content. He wanted 
no more and could have been happy with no less. 
And yet beneath the steady glow of his satisfaction 
there stirred the troubled thoughts that had been 
with him earlier in the afternoon. He knew that 
unless he made his decision here and now the happi¬ 
ness would break, the old restlessness flood back 
upon him. What his decision would be he knew 
well enough, and the knowledge was, in its own way, 
delightful. It gave to him a sense of mystery; he 
savoured already the pleasure to come of telling 
her, asking her, and seeing her surrender. And 
yet . . . had there been no necessity for decision 
how perfect an evening to remember! 

He lifted her hand and kissed the palm. 

Joyce sat quietly by his side; his silence puzzled 
her, but she was happy in the lazy warmth of the 
evening that seemed intensified by the sentiment of 
his touch. 

It was almost dark now among the trees. Only 
above them the light stayed reluctant to be gone, 
in the clear arch of the sky, a faint, washed blue 
brightening to saffron low down behind the prick¬ 
ing spire of Kensington. Sudden lights sprang up 
in distant streets, and around them rose, like the 
sad cries of imprisoned beasts, the call of keepers 
on the emptying paths. The sound woke him to 
speech. With his hand he turned her face towards 
him and she smiled. 

‘‘Joyce,’’ he said gently, “will you marry me?” 

She drew back sharply, instinctively. Never in 
her most secret thoughts had she faced the possi¬ 
bility of the question. 


no An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘My darling, my darling, you must!’^ His voice 
trembled; all his consciousness was narrowed to the 
single point of his desire. 

“Can’t you understand what you mean to me?” 
he went on, “can’t you see that without you I shall 
go mad?” 

To the wonder of her first surprise pleasure 
succeeded and pride. What a piece of news for 
Hilda!—but that she could say anything but “no” 
was unthinkable. 

“Oh, Harry,” she murmured, “I can’t, you 
mustn’t ask me!” 

■ “Why can’t you?” His determination drew 
strength from her refusal. 

“I couldn’t, really.” The words were drawn 
from her like a refrain. 

“You’re not engaged already?” 

“Oh no!” 

“Not to that boy you told me of?” Quickly 
jealous, he used unconsciously her own phrase. 

“No.” 

“But you’re fond of him, you like him better than 
you hke me?” 

“He’s an awfully nice kid.” 

“And I’m not?” 

“Don’t be silly! I like you ever so.” 

He felt a faint distaste to be bargaining thus for 
her on a level with the youths of Clapham, but it 
vanished and left his eagerness the greater. 

“You can’t, you mustn’t refuse,” he said. “My 
dear, I love you, and that’s all that matters.” 

A figure swinging a lantern came mistily upon 
them from the path. The keeper’s cry sounded 


An Unknown Quantity iii 

nearer. They rose and walked slowly back towards 
the gate. He talked, pleading as they went. 

“You do believe I love you?” 

“Of course.” 

“Then marry me.” 

“I can’t!” 

“But you give no reason! Oh, if you knew the 
agony I’ve been through this last week you’d have 
to say yes!” 

Something in his voice thrilled her; she looked 
up at him. “Were you very unhappy?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said simply, and they walked in 
silence. 

In the street they paused a moment, then, cross¬ 
ing the road, he led her through South Kensington 
towards Chelsea. « 

“Give me some reason,” he said suddenly; “tell 
me why you can’t.” 

The desolate spaces of Queen’s Gate lay before 
them, softened by the dusk to a certain dignity that 
seemed to Joyce impressive. Nothing remotely like 
this had ever happened to her: she softened and 
clung more closely to him. Why, after all, was it 
so impossible? Memory awoke in her of their 
evenings together, of his words, of the strangeness 
of his love-making. It was rather wonderful to be 
able to make a man talk like that! he would never 
have said such things to Hilda! A wave of pride 
sent the colour to her cheeks. WTiat could she say? 
she must give some reason and what reason other 
than the promptings of instinct had she? Now 
that the first shock of surprise was spent she felt 
less certain. Mistily she remembered something 
she had read in a book. 


112 An Unknown Quantity 

‘^What would your friends say?^’ she asked. 

‘‘What should they say! what difference could 
they make to us? you’re not frightened of my 
friends?” 

“I’m so different.” 

“Yes, you’re more charming, simpler, fresher.” 

“Your mother would hate me!” 

“My mother’s one wish is for me to get married.” 

“Not to a girl like me!” The words came from 
her heart, and there was in them the faintest tinge 
of bitterness. She was shrewd enough to know that 
they were true. 

He drew her closer to him. “My dear,” he said 
softly, “if she knows I love you she’ll love you 
too.” 

“Oh, Harry, she couldn’t; why should she?” 

“Because you and only you can make me happy.” 

“Perhaps I shouldn’t, after all.’' 

He gripped her arm. “You mustn’t say that, 
even in fun!” he said. “Do you think I don’t 
linowV^ 

They passed on down Queen’s Gate, Evelyn con¬ 
scious of little beyond the beating of his heart, 
Joyce vaguely regretful of the seeming finality of 
her refusal, yet still troubled and uncertain. For 
a while neither spoke: the street was empty and the 
sound of their footsteps filled the evening with 
echoes. At last he turned to her. 

“After all, my dear, perhaps it’s your mother 
who won’t like me; that’s possible, you know!” 

“My mother’s dead,” she replied simply. 

“Your father, then.” 

“He’s dead too.” 

“You poor little thing! Is there nobody?” 


An Unknown Quantity 113 

“No one but Hilda.” 

“Your friendr’ 

“Yes—and George/’ There was a suspicion of 
mischief in the addition. 

“Oh yes, George! and of course you care for him 
more than you do for me, don’t you?” 

“I don’t know,” she replied truthfully. 

He stopped suddenly and twisted her round until 
she faced him. “Joyce darling, can’t you see you 
must marry me? you ought to be taken care of, 
protected, loved, and I love you, isn’t that enough?” 

She made no answer, but her hand tightened on 
his sleeve as they walked on. She looked up at him. 

“Why do you want to marry she asked. 

“Because I love you,” he answered. 

“Why?” 

The question was, somehow, so child-like that he 
felt the tears tingle in his eyes. 

“How can I tell you why? I love you because 
there’s nobody like you!” 

“Oh, but there’s heaps of girls prettier than me!” 

“It’s not only your prettiness!” as he said the 
words he realised uncomfortably that they were 
only half true, “it’s everything.” 

“But I’m so stupid!” 

“You’re not, you’re simple, which is quite a dif¬ 
ferent, a delightful thing. Oh, my dearest, do you 
know that wherever I go I see you—in trains, in 
theatres, in the streets: there’s nobody in the wide 
world like you!” 

Pleasure at the words swept away her incredulity. 
She smiled to herself, but said no more. 

They walked silently on through the grey maze 
of South Kensington. The endless rows of pre- 


114 An Unknown Quantity 

tentious houses seemed to Evelyn frowningly hos¬ 
tile: the weight of their respectability was heavy 
upon him and kept him from speaking. Not until 
they crossed the Fulham Road into the lilac- 
shadowed streets of Chelsea could he find more 
words, but allowed his thoughts to play dumbly 
round the girl beside him. He was baffled, he 
admitted to himself, by her continued resistance. 
In the depths of his mind stirred and whispered 
the idea of how much, after all, he was offering 
her, the ‘‘chance’^ he was giving, and though he 
was ashamed of the reflection, he could not alto¬ 
gether drive it from him. Whatever his ‘‘advan¬ 
tages,” however, her refusal was quite definitely 
there to be reckoned with, and instinctively, in self- 
defence he traced its presence to a delicacy, a 
timidity, that made her, if possible, even more 
alluring. No matter what she had said, he would 
have turned it, twisted it, fitted it, stretched or 
lopped into the Procrustean bed of his imagination. 

They passed down Church Street and he pointed 
to an agent’s board standing forlorn and expectant 
in the front garden of a tiny house. 

“Wouldn’t that do just for us?” he asked. “I 
can see it all, the drawing-room there with the little 
iron balcony, the dining-room below, and perhaps 
a little garden behind; a doll’s house for you to 
play with. Wouldn’t you love it?” 

For answer she pressed his arm in a sudden 
ecstasy at the thought of possession. 

He felt that he had won through the outworks 
of her defence, and the sense of triumph made his 
very walk seem more determined; his arm in hers 
was masterful. 


An Unknown Quantity 115 

When they reached the Embankment he spoke 
again. 

‘‘Joyce,” he said, “you must. At least if you 
won’t say you’ll marry me, don’t, for God’s sake, 
tell me that you won’t! I must have a chance, the 
barest chance, to live on. I can’t go through another 
time like last week, it would drive me mad. I can’t 
give up hope, I neednH give up hope!” 

He waited a moment for her reply; then, “No,” 
she whispered very faintly. 

“You darling, you darling,” he stammered and 
pressed her to him, but the publicity of the street 
shamed her and she pushed him gently away. 

“Say you’ll think about it!” he pleaded. 

“I will, really.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Yes, seriously.” 

He was shaken with the violence of his emotion, 
and as she felt him tremble there before her, she was 
moved more deeply than she had ever been before. 

“Do you really want me so badly?” she whis¬ 
pered. 

He made no answer, but stood there staring at 
her. 

She held out her hand. “Don’t come any far¬ 
ther, Harry,” she said. 

“No farther! why not?” 

“Please don’t; I’d rather you didn’t.” 

“When will you let me know? I must know soon; 

to-morrow^, the next day?” 

“I’ll see you Sunday afternoon, if you like, in 
Battersea Park, by the river.” 

“And it must be yes, Joyce; it must!” 


Ii6 An Unknown Quantity 

She said nothing to that, and was gone before 
he could hold her. Half dazed he watched her top 
the curve of the bridge and vanish into the magic 
darkness of Battersea. 


THE SEVENTH CHAPTER 


I 

J OYCE wallced home hardly conscious of her 
surroundings. Crowds filled the pavements 
and overflowed into the road, jostling, shouting, 
laughing, opening now and again before the stag¬ 
gering bulk of a clanging, dazzling tram-car, flow¬ 
ing together in its wake like an army that closes 
suddenly, vengefully, behind the onrush of a too- 
daring enemy. Her mind held nothing but the 
memory of an astounding occurrence. She did not 
‘‘think’’; she was conscious merely of words that 
repeated themselves over and over again, turning 
and twisting in her brain. By the time she reached 
Verbena Terrace she was no nearer deciding on 
her probable line of action than she had been an 
hour previously. The portentous fact stood merely 
where it had done, blocking the way, exciting but 
vaguely threatening. Some time, she realised, she 
must get round it, some time soon, before Sunday, 
but at present she could do no more than look 
at it. 

As she climbed the stairs the sound of voices 
came faintly from behind the sitting-room door. 
She stopped a moment, surprised and half relieved 
at the diversion; then, stepping forward, she turned 
the handle and stood blinking in the sudden light. 

117 


Ii8 An Unknown Quantity 

The large, square, centre table was laid for sup¬ 
per, and Joyce noticed that there were three places, 
three “serviettes,’’ three pink glass tumblers. On 
the fourth side Hilda was sitting, her head thrown 
back, holding in her mouth a large banana, at the 
projecting portion of which a young man with a 
freckled face and blindfolded eyes was making in¬ 
effectual bites. Neither of them could see the door 
and both were unaware of Joyce’s presence until 
the sound of her voice broke through the gurgles 
and laughter of their game. 

“Hullo, George,” she said. 

The young man stopped in the middle of a more 
than usually futile attempt to attain his object, 
and fumblingly removed the pocket-handl^erchief 
that obscured most of his face. Thus revealed he 
appeared as a pleasant, callow young man with 
watery eyes, sandy, almost invisible eyebrows, and 
a large, rather shapeless mouth. 

Hilda tilted herself forward to the table and bit 
sharply into the banana so that the exposed end 
dropped suddenly into her lap. 

“Well, you are late!” she mumbled through the 
hidden morsels of the fruit. “AVe began to think 
you weren’t coming in to supper. George has 
dropped in,” she added unnecessarily. 

Joyce, meanwhile, had gone across to the fire¬ 
place, where she was taking olf her hat and smooth¬ 
ing her hair before the mirror. As she did so she 
could see the reflected image of George playing 
nervously with the handkerchief which he had not 
yet disposed of, and the sight awoke in her an 
unaccustomed sensation of irritation. She was 
suddenly aware, vividly aware, of the note of vul- 


An Unknown Quantity 119 

garity in the scene she had just witnessed. Twenty- 
four hours earlier she would scarcely have noticed 
it. 

She turned and faced the embarrassed gaze of 
the repentant George. 

“Hullo, kiddy,he said, and moved towards her. 
He took her by the shoulders and bent forward 
for a kiss, but she twisted free with a petulant 
shake of the head and walked over to the window. 
He looked after her, surprised, hurt. 

“What’s up!” he inquired, “you haven’t said 
good evening.” Hilda, with a laugh, jumped up 
from her chair and busied herself at the table. 

“Oh, don’t mind she said; “I’m sure I’m 

used to it!” In the farthest corner of the room 
Joyce was folding and brushing, with an air of 
careful concentration, the coat she had just taken 
off. 

“I thought you were going to the Hippodrome 
with your pal Fred to-night,” she remarked at 
length, a little too nonchalantly. 

George took eagerly the proffered road to an 
easier relationship. “So I was, but Fred brought 
a bird along, and as I hadn’t got mine I felt dee 
trop and hooked it.” He uttered the words with a 
clumsy attempt at gallantry that at any other time 
would have appeased Joyce’s quickly roused tem¬ 
per: to-night, for some reason that he could not 
understand, they seemed to increase it. She too 
was surprised at her own feeling of irritation and 
wondered vaguely what had come “over her.” 

Hilda’s voice, shrill above the clatter of the plates, 
came to the rescue. 

“Yes, he came round just before you come in, 


120 An Unknown Quantity 

and I asked him to ’ave a bite with ns. I do hope 
I didn’t do wrong,” she added malicionsly. 

Joyce turned round, forcing herself to smile. 
‘‘What do you mean, Hilda? Of course you didn’t; 
come on, let’s get a move on!” 

“Well, it’s all ready: ’ere you two, just you sit 
down while I open the salmon.” 

The meal was, from its start, quite obviously a 
failure. George, feeling that upon him lay the bur¬ 
den of entertaining the company, talked and ate 
simultaneously to a running accompaniment of 
giggles from Hilda, whose encouraging comments 
on his conversational efforts never got beyond the 
statement, repeated at frequent intervals, that he 
was a “one.” Cheered by this enthusiastic sup¬ 
port, in the midst of-what he felt to be, otherwise, 
a hostile atmosphere, their guest embarked upon 
a lengthy description of his last year’s holiday at 
Broadstairs. It was a rambling story of boarding¬ 
house gaiety in which the chief characters appeared 
to be George, and a collection of nameless individu¬ 
als who flitted in and out of the narrative under 
the generic terms of “The girls” and “The chaps.” 
The incidents related dealt mostly with elaborate 
practical jokes which, when perpetrated by the 
“girls,” took the form of sewing up the pyjamas 
of their male companions who invariably retorted 
by making elaborate and exceedingly successful 
apple-pie beds for their elusive charmers. There 
was reference later to certain adventures of mixed 
bathing, and though the description was marked by 
a commendable reticence, Hilda found occasion 
frequently to indicate that George had been more 
of a “one” than ever. 


An Unknown Quantity 121 

Joyce, throughout the meal, said little, though 
she smiled now and again as George warmed to 
his theme. It was not until they had nearly fin¬ 
ished that she became involved personally in the 
conversation. 

“Talking of holidays,’’ said George, “reminds 
me. When are we going to get off, kiddy?” 

She looked up quickly from her plate. “Why, I 
haven’t given it a thought,” she replied. 

“You two goin’ away together this year?” Hilda 
asked. 

“Rather! aren’t we, kid?” 

“If I can get my hols, same time as yours.” 

“Well it’s only natural; I expect you’ll ’ave no 
end of a time.” 

^*^Kid’s rather keen on Bournemouth,” continued 
George; “though I’m not sure about it myself; 
Margate’s more in my line.” 

“Margate’s so low,” complained Joyce. 

Hilda looked sharply across at her friend. “Oh, 
Joyce always was one for doing things in style!” she 
said. 

“Well, I don’t mind so long as she^s pleased.” 

Joyce had a sudden feeling of compunction; she 
smiled and her voice was softer as she replied. 

“I’m not so set on Bournemouth: you choose, 
George; you must have a good holiday.” 

In the cleared atmosphere the rest of the evening 
passed almost gaily. It was only when George got 
up to go that the clouds gathered again. 

“Oh, I say, kid,” he ventured as he took up his 
hat, “hope you don’t mind, but I shan’t be able 
to see you Saturday; I promised Fred I’d go to 
the Oval with ’im.” 


122 An Unknown Quantity 

Joyce knew very well that she didn’t mind in the 
least, but she chose to find a grievance where she 
realised that none was intended. All the irritation 
which she had kept, since her first discovery of 
George and Hilda, so carefully bottled up, emptied 
itself upon her unfortunate suitor. At that moment 
she quite clearly and surprisingly disliked George. 

“Oh, don’t mind me/’ she replied, with a toss 
of her head. “I’m sure you’ll find the cricket much 
more amusing than me. Perhaps Fred’ll bring his 
bird again.” 

Hilda tittered audibly in the background. George 
took an embarrassed step forward. “Look ’ere, 
kid,” he began, “if you’re going to-” 

She interrupted him petulantly. ‘ ^ Oh, go to your 
old Oval, only don’t expect me to see you Sunday: 
I’ve got something better to do!” 

He stood still, turning his hat nervously in his 
hands. He cleared his throat and tried to speak, 
but no words came. Hilda touched his sleeve. 

“Don’t mind her,” she said, “she’s tired and 
wants a good lay down.” She led him towards 
the door. 

Joyce could hear them talking in whispers on 
the landing. There was a shght scuffle and a pro¬ 
testing giggle from Hilda. The sound infuriated 
her, and turning sharply, she crossed the room 
almost without knowing what she did. 

As she opened the door the sudden beam of light 
caught them huddled in a corner of the stairs. 

“Why don’t you take her out on Sunday?” she 
cried, and as an ill-tempered after-thought she 
added, “then you can buy her some more bananas!” 

Furiously she slammed back into the room and 



An Unknown Quantity 123 

sat down by the dishevelled table. For some time 
she stayed motionless, listening idly to the sound 
of their voices floating in to her from the street. 
Her sudden temper had flared and died down again, 
leaving her irritated at the foolish loss of dignity, 
the lapse into commonness of which she had been 
guilty, annoyed too, that she had been unfair to 
George, annoyed, but in no degree remorseful. 
The murmur of conversation droned on beneath 
the window, but she made no attempt to hear what 
was being said; she was, for the moment, utterly 
without curiosity. The lamp was smoking and 
mechanically she turned it down. She felt no anger 
now, only a clear certainty, newborn, that she could 
never marry George. It was as though the experi¬ 
ences of the last few weeks, stored hitherto sub¬ 
consciously, had, in a couple of hours, stirred to 
life in her mind. Never before had she seriously 
compared Harry with the people of her intimate, 
daily life, but now the vision of him came and 
would not be driven out, the memory of his pro¬ 
testations echoed mutinously in her ears. She was 
still dazzled by the thought of his promises, by 
the contemplation of the future that they offered, 
that did not seem now, as it had done earlier, 
quite so far beyond the hope of her attainment. 
That first, surprising offer in Kensington Gardens 
had taken her unawares and instinctively she had 
refused; the whole situation had seemed, at the 
moment, too utterly impossible, but second thoughts 

were sometimes best and, well- 

He wanted her, wanted her frightfully, of that 
she was certain, and after all, why not? She 
wasnT really the kind of girl George ought to marry, 



124 An Unknown Quantity 

he would never understand her ideas and her am¬ 
bitions; even Hilda had seen the difference in her, 
had understood that she liked things done with 
style. . . . 

The question of love entered into her calcula¬ 
tions only in a minor degree. Harry was a dear 
and he wanted her, what more need she worry 
about? Of real passion, real desire, she knew 
nothing and felt vaguely that it was not considered 
‘‘quite nice” in the circles in which fate seemed de¬ 
termined that she was in the future to move. She 
liked him, of course, awfully; she told herself that 
she was “fond” of him. Why, she couldnT even 
think about him, not in this way, if she wasnT 
sure of that! only bad girls in books married men 
they weren’t fond of, and she couldn’t do a thing 
like that. 

She got up and went listlessly to the window. 
A few hours ago she had been in the mysterious, 
prosperous quiet of Chelsea streets, moving through 
them as though she belonged there: with one word 
she could claim them as her right, them and all 
that they stood for in her mind, ease, nice clothes, 
a house of her own, and a “position” as the wife 
of an “ author,” on a level with the occasional women 
who came with their husbands to the office. No 
more typing for “old N.,” no more hot summer 
evenings in crowded, stifling trains. Thoughts of 
a “Louis” suite seen once in Oxford Street came 
to her with a sweet persuasiveness. George and 
she could never have afforded such a luxury, but 
now- 

She looked down at the raucous streets, at the 
glaring white fagade of the Picture Palace opposite. 



An Unknown Quantity 125 

and for perhaps the first time in her life she found 
the scene unattractive. It seemed as though at the 
back of her mind had always lurked a knowledge 
that there were ‘ ‘ nicer things, things that she 
could enjoy, that she hungered for. The temptation 
was overwhelming and her scruples—well, when 
she came to consider it like this, what exactly were 
her scruples? Socially, of course, such a life would 
be ditferent, but there was nothing to frighten her 
in that. She would have to learn things, but, then, 
why shouldn’t she? Her eye had always been 
quick to notice ‘‘real ladies,” a true instinct had 
already prompted her to imitate them in little 
things, in dress, in manner . . . she wasn’t like 
Hilda, not a bit. After all, she supposed, it was 
only a matter of habit, of changing one fashion for 
another. Others had made the change, why not 
she? and then, Harry being an author would un¬ 
derstand so much better, because in books it was 
always the hum.ble girl who married the “gentle¬ 
man.” True, he was a superior sort of author, 
he was clever, so much she had overheard of con¬ 
versations at business, but the distinction did not 
worry her unduly; books to her were books, she 
did not differentiate. 

. . . George? would it be treating him very 
badly? . . . She pushed the question from her, 
refused to tackle it. They weren’t engaged—not 
really, though she was bound to admit that she 
had promised to spend her holidays with him, and 
that was “as good as” . . . still, there was no 
ring, nothing definite, and then, after to-night she 
felt sure they would never be happy. . . . 

For a while she mused on contentedly, all traces 


126 An Unknown Quantity 

of her recent anger vanished, nothing left but pleas¬ 
ant memories of the afternoon to which the neces¬ 
sity, kept well in the background of her thoughts, 
of making a decision, lent a certain spice of added 
enjoyment. Hilda and George must have walked 
down the road, she could no longer hear their voices. 
The street was becoming emptier, quieter. Now and 
again the silence was broken by the screech of a 
late tram, and against the sky flashes from distant 
trains played like summer lightning. 

It seemed an age before the slamming of the 
front door and the sound of steps upon the stairs 
told her that her friend had returned. For a mo¬ 
ment she felt a little frightened, remorseful for 
her recent outburst of temper. That had all gone 
now, and her later mood of reflection had brought 
the desire for reconciliation. As the door opened 
she turned towards it. Hilda, she could see, was 
uneasy too, defensively sullen. Joyce took a step 
forward, smiling; she could atford to be generous, 
say,’’ she tentatively murmured, ‘H’m sorry.” 

Hilda responded immediately. The flow of her 
good nature swept all signs of hostility from her 
face. 

“That’s all right, old dear,” she answered; 
“you’re tired, that’s what it is.” 

Joyce said nothing and she continued on a note 
of anxiety: 

“Anything wrong? you do look a bit queer, and 
I noticed you ’ardly ate any supper. Old N. in 
the tantrums?” 

“Oh, I’m all right, don’t you worry.” 

“Take a cup o’ tea if I make it, dear?” Tea 
was Hilda’s panacea for all ills. 


An Unknown Quantity 127 

don’t mind.” 

The tray was brought out, the kettle put on, and 
neither of the two girls spoke a word; only when 
they were settled with their cups in front of the 
tire did Joyce find the words she had been seeking. 

‘‘Hilda,” she said, “he asked me to marry him, 
to-day. ’ ’ 

“Well, time enough too! I’d ’ave got it out of 
’ini before now if it’d been me! Of course when I 
’eard you talking about ’olidays and all that I knew 
it must be sort of settled, but it’s just as well to 
know where you are; I always do say there’s some¬ 
thing about a ring! besides, a gentleman didn’t 
ought to go on for months like ’e’s done without 
making a declaration. As I was remarking only last 
Tuesday-” 

Joyce plunged into the flow of amiable volubility 
like a swimmer diving into a breaking sea. 

“But—but—it wasn’t George!^^ she stammered. 

To a third person Hilda’s amazement would have 
been comic. Her eyes grew large, her mouth fell 
open, and, for the first time in her life, an emergency 
found her speechless. At last, feeling that her cup 
impeded the free current of interrogation, she put it 
down untasted by her side. 

“Oo!” she said, “not the other one?” 

“Mm, Harry!” 

“Oh, crikey! and to think of all the things I said 
about ’im, let alone thought! , Is he talking 
serious ? ” 

Joyce nodded. 

“Well, I never, isn’t it weird! whoever would ’ave 
thought it! what did you say?” 

“I’m going to let him know Sunday.’’ 



128 


An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘What are you going to say?’^ 

“I can’t make up my mind; what would you say?” 

“Oh, don’t make me laugh, old dear! what would 
I say! just try me and see! ’ ’ 

“It’d all be so different.” 

“Has ’e got any money?” 

‘ ‘ I think so; he’s a writer. ’ ’ 

“What’s ’e write, stories?” 

“Yes.” 

“Oh, well, he^s all right then; I’ve ’eard tell that 
Ruby Ayres makes hundreds and thousands! You 
gone on ’im?” 

‘ ‘ He’s awfully nice. ’ ’ 

“Well, then, what are you worrying about? worry¬ 
ing! why—when ’e’s offerin’ to make you a real tip 
topper with clothes and a ’ouse and a motor-car, and 
nothing to do but amuse yourself, and—and ” 

Hilda’s restive imagination, at this point, put on 
such speed that it outdistanced, altogether, her 
powers of expression. 

“But I’m not used to all that!” 

Joyce spoke in terms of real timidity; now that 
she was putting into words what had previously 
crept into her thoughts as the most distant of magi¬ 
cal possibilities, the uncertainty of the future took 
on a more tangible and a more frightening shape. 

The objection was waved aside as negligible. 

“Why, you can do it on your ’ead. I’ve always 
said you was high class and I meant it. You’re just 
cut out for a lady. It’s nothing, only keeping your 
eyes open for a bit. There’s Sally Payne that was, 
married a gentleman in the second-’and book line, 
and just look at Yr.'” 

“But this isn’t the same!” 



An Unknown Quantity 129 

‘‘Oh, don’t think I’m making comparisons, dear! 
of course 1 know, but, you take my word, it’ll be as 
easy as easy.” She broke off for a second before pur¬ 
suing a more congenial line of thought. ‘ ‘ My! what 
a bottom draw you’ll ’ave now and no mistake!” 

Beneath the lash of her friend’s enthusiasm, Joyce 
found herself, perversely enough, shrinking, shirk¬ 
ing. For the first time she felt real doubt, not now 
of her ability to tackle the situation, but of her fit¬ 
ness to fill it. It was sensibility dying at birth. For 
a moment or two she sat looking into the fire without 
speaking; then: 

“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured. 

“Oh, Lord! haven’t I told you?” 

“P’r’aps I shouldn’t be right for him, though.” 

“Eight indeed! Why, old dear, there’s only two 
sorts of wives, good and bad, and if ’e gets you ’e’s 
not got much to complain of. After all, I always say 
a man’s a man and a woman’s a woman all the world 
over.” 

At this voicing by another of her own essential 
conviction, Joyce felt her recent attempts at resis¬ 
tance, at the best but half-hearted, weaken. One 
obstacle alone remained to be surmounted, one pj-ick 
of conscience to be numbed. 

“I should feel so badly about George,” she pro¬ 
tested. 

“Oh, yes, of course there’s ’im,” Hilda agreed, 
but the light in her eyes betrayed the solicitude of 
her words; “I expect ’e will feel a bit cut up.” 

“I don’t think I could tell him; I should feel ever 
so bad about it! ” 

“Well, of course it isn’t as though there’d ever 


130 


An Unknown Quantity 

been anything fixed, is it? It makes a difference, 
yon know/’ 

Still, I’d led him to expect; he’d asked me to 
think serious.” 

‘‘Well, then, I don’t see that ’e can complain if 
you have thought serious—the other way, can ’e?” 

It occurred suddenly to Joyce to wonder at the fer¬ 
vent advocacy of her friend. She glanced at her, 
and in the brightness of her eyes she read a secret. 
Inspiration came to her in a flash. 

“Couldn’t you tell him for me?” she asked. 

Hilda reached across and took up her cup with an 
air of indifference. “It’s nothing to do with me, my 
dear,” she said. 

“I don’t think he’d mind it so much from you. 
After all, you’ve known him much longer than what 
I have.” 

“Well, of course I did see a good deal of ’im at 
one time, but then bygones is bygones; besides, ’e’d 
think it so odd of me talking like that! ’ ’ 

“It’d be much easier, and it’d be helping me ever 
so.” 

“I don’t think I can, really: what would ’e say?” 

“You could explain so much better, and he likes 
you. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Oh, go on! I know all about that sort of liking! ’ ’ 
Pleasure and protest fought for supreihacy in 
Hilda’s voice. 

‘ ‘ He does, honour bright! ’ ’ 

“Oh yes, I believe you!” Pleasure was winning. 

“It’s George that’s worrying me more than any¬ 
thing. ’ ’ 

“He’ll be all right, m’dear. P’raps ’e’s not been 


/ 


An Unknown Quantity 131 

taking it so serious as you think:’’ old jealousy long 
suppressed could not resist the thrust. 

“Well, then, will you tell him I” 

“P’raps I will; but, mind you, I’m not promising, 
don’t build on it!” 

Joyce rose, yawning. 

“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m ever 
so tired; I’m going to bed.” 

“So’m I; pleasant dreams, dear.” 

It was then that Joyce did a thing she had never in 
her life done before. She put both hands on Hilda’s 
shoulders and kissed her. 

“Good night, dear,” she said. “I think George’ll 
get over it.” 

* # # # * 

Later, lying in bed, she reflected pleasantly that it 
was, after all, her duty to Hilda to be unselfish, and 
comforted by the thought she fell asleep to dream 
ecstatically of “Louis” suites. 


II 

About two o’clock of the following Sunday after¬ 
noon, Henry Evelyn Eendle stood, rather self-con¬ 
sciously, upon the highest point of the Albert 
Bridge, and turned to contemplate the panorama of 
Chelsea. In the windy spaciousness of the spring 
sunlight the Embankment had about it, certainly, a 
look of the sea. He toyed gently with the idea. It 
was not difficult to fancy the old Parish Church a 
quayside chapel—the flagstaff at least was mari¬ 
time—and the flat fagade of the Cheyne Walk houses 
with painted shutters flung back here and there to 



132 An Unknown Quantity 

embrace the sun, took on, without any undue effort 
of his imagination, the guise of warehouses. 
Boulogne? hardly: you missed the hill, the crown¬ 
ing welcome of the Cathedral. . . . St. Malo? pos¬ 
sibly . . . half close your eyes and you could all but 
see the nets drying on the sea wall, the lobster pots, 
and fishermen contemplatively spitting. . . . 

It was a pleasant conceit that, of the port, the 
barrier, the gate of London, the London he knew, 
with the straight vista of Oakley street plunging 
through into the heart of things. Here he was out¬ 
side it all on the bridge—^he would have preferred 
to keep his sea metaphor intact but it was impossible 
with the best will in the world to imagine this 
swinging lane of trams and motor-buses a ship—out¬ 
side it in the flesh and still more so, as he told him¬ 
self when he thought of Joyce, in spirit. 

The glamour of May was upon him breathing 
sentiment. Piled masses of cloud, glittering white, a 
sky, remote, tender, washed to the faintest, cleanest 
blue imaginable; a wind ruffling the water in gusts 
till it looked like the blown feathers on a duck^s 
back ... a day, if ever there was one, to inspire a 
minor poet. He felt to the full its amorous prompt¬ 
ings and surrendered himself, after the shortest of 
struggles, to an orgy of emotional self-indulgence. 
His reason, shamefaced in such matters, dutifully 
protested at so undistinguished a weakness, but be¬ 
yond calling up, as in duty bound, a blush of which 
he was barely conscious, accepted, on this occasion 
with resignation, an inglorious defeat. Even the 
stagnant Sunday odours, drifting remorselessly 
from Battersea, failed to rouse it, and he wandered 



An Unknown Quantity 133 

on aware of nothing but the pleasing tremors of his 
love. 

On the farther side of the bridge he turned into 
Battersea Park and sat down upon one of the seats 
facing the river. The distant cries of children came 
to his ears distinct through the Sunday silence. Idly 
he watched an occasional steamer, black mth holiday 
crowds, slide easily upstream with the flowing tide. 
On the Chelsea shore, still irradiated for him by 
symbolic gleams, points and flashes of light caught 
here and there from the triumphant day, signalled, 
as it were, to all who cared to see, the dancing joy of 
walls and windows in the newborn sun. 

That she would come to him he had no doubt, and 
in the confidence that her answer would be the one 
he sought, he let his mind play with the prospect of 
the future in a mood of calm delight. The restless¬ 
ness, that but a week before had destroyed in him all 
power of thought and concentration lived now only 
in memory, a memory of nightmare that gave him, 
nevertheless, a queer sensation of pleasure when he 
reflected upon the emotional experience in which it 
had come to birth. He had seen her and told her 
what there had been in his mind to tell, and a great 
calmness had resulted. Not for a moment did he 
consider the possibility of her refusal. Even his 
previous hours and days of discomfort seemed to 
him now to have been due rather to his own uncer¬ 
tainty than to the belief that she could refuse to fol¬ 
low when he once determined to lead. Let him but 
show the way and she would come. The terrible 
confusion of thoughts, desires, and doubts had re¬ 
solved itself, with an almost audible ‘ ^ clickas of a 
machine, into the ordered flow of conscious life to 


134 An Unknown Quantity 

which he was accustomed. The immediate effect of 
his interview Avith Joyce had been to make possible 
for him a return to work. For two days now he had 
felt the old imaginative vigour as sure and intact as 
in the days before he had first met her, had found it 
true, clear-eyed, and confident, buoyed up as it was 
on the placid depths of his certainty and satisfac¬ 
tion. This, the immediate result of his decision, ap¬ 
pealed to him now irresistibly, if rather illogically, 
as an irrefutable proof of the ^‘rightness’’ of his 
choice. He did not even begin to doubt the ‘‘right¬ 
ness’^ of it, although he realised clearly that given 
some slight difference in the make-up of their re¬ 
spective selves, the result could and Avould have been 
different. It was by no means impossible to imagine 
their relationship slipping into an affair of irregular 
—to use the common phrase—adjustments. He 
might, had he been less fundamentally conventional, 
have proposed a “loose” attachment, and Joyce, 
given certain conditions, might have consented to 
become his mistress. The possibility floated through 
his mind as he watched the play of summer light 
upon the houses opposite, but the rejection of this 
alternative to his proposal was accompanied, in his 
mind, by no feeling of regret. That was not what he 
had wanted. As he had told Agatha while he yet 
regarded himself as heart free, the substantial fact 
of marriage attracted him, and against this open 
door his mother, with her desire to see him settled 
paramount in her mind, had knocked insistently. 
His first, negative reaction to her demands had been 
instinctive but only momentary; in the inmost 
corner of his consciousness he had known, all the 
time, that he Avanted just that same solution. That 



An Unknown Quantity 135 

his mother would be surprised, probably shocked, at 
the details of his choice, he realised; but he sincerely 
believed in his ability to win her to tolerance by the 
assurance of his happiness, and, in addition, there 
was just that degree of obstinacy in his decision, that 
clinging remnant of hostility to parental dictation, 
to make him delight in the gesture that said in etfect, 
“You want me to marry? well then, you shall see how 
I, quite indubitably, take the choice into my own 
hands 

She came towards him slowly but without hesita¬ 
tion, and, as he rose smilingly to meet her, the new¬ 
found certainty of his happiness swept through him. 
There was for both of them a quality in the meeting 
that was new, a serenity purged of fever and secrecy. 
In Evelyn the feeling was clear and steady of being 
now for the first time an accepted lover, and the con¬ 
sciousness gave to him an appearance of strength 
and assurance that his courtship, hitherto, had 
lacked. Joyce, as she saw him smiling before her, 
reahsed the touch in him of something strange and 
delightful. Her heart was beating and she was ner¬ 
vous, but her resolution had been taken and never 
wavered. 

He took her arm and set her, without speaking, 
beside him on the bench. His passion no longer 
sputtered and flared into spasmodic embraces, but 
burned with a steady flame that held them, as it were 
inextricably united at its heart. 

Smiling into each other’s eyes they sat and felt no 
need for words. When at length Evelyn spoke, it 
was in a voice low, firm, undoubting. 

“My dear,” he said, “you’ve come to tell me that 

you’ll marry me?” 


136 An Unknown Quantity 

Though for the last two days she had been think¬ 
ing of nothing but those words she heard them now 
as for the first time. All the cheap little garment of 
her vulgar coquetries dropped, for the time being, 
clean away from her. She felt suddenly very happy, 
very responsible. 

Harry dear,’’ she answered, ‘‘are you sure you 
know what you ’re asking ? Do you really want me ? ’ ’ 

Evelyn noticed the change in her: it was as 
though wonderfully, in a moment of time, she had 
grown up new and strange before him. His heart 
leapt at the discovery, he drew her to him. 

“As sure, my darling,” he said, “as I shall ever be 
of anything. ’ ’ 

She knew now that she would marry him, and in 
the knowledge found words to depreciate her gift. 

“You don’t know anything about me,” she pro¬ 
tested, “really you don’t. I’m not clever, and I 
don’t read books, not like what you do; I can’t be 
a help to you.” 

There was so pathetic an appeal in the words that 
the sense of her as something clinging, trusting, 
overwhelmed him, and with it came a new perception 
of her as a woman to be moulded as he willed, a per¬ 
ception that gave him an added sense of power. He 
kissed her to silence. 

“You dear little goose,” he smiled, “I don’t want 
a clever wife. I love you and that’s enough. Do 
you love me a little too?” 

“I like you awfully; you’re a dear.” 

“But do you love me?” 

Instinctively she had kept the question at a dis¬ 
tance because she did not know the answer. Now 
she must face it. 


An Unknown Quantity 137 

‘ ‘ I think so, ’ ^ she whispered at length. 

The childish simplicity of the answer gave him, 
strangely, a deeper delight than he would have felt 
at a more passionate declaration. 

They sat for a few minutes in silence. It was 
Joyce at last who broke it. 

‘‘You ought to marry a lady,’’ she said. 

He laughed happily. “What should I do with a 
lady, as you call her, for a wife? You’ve a wrong 
idea of me, Joyce; I’m a working man, you know. 
Writing books isn’t as easy as reading them; I have 
to work and work and then perhaps nothing comes 
of it.” 

She took the words, as she took all his words, 
literally, so that the note of affectation escaped her. 
She didn’t understand him when he spoke like that: 
she only knew that he lived in what was to her a 
world of leisure, “doing” stories for fun. 

“You’re going to be ever so famous, I expect,” 
she said musingly. 

“In my own way, Joyce, in my own way, and with 
you to help. ’ ’ 

“Oh, but I’ve told you I can’t help you like that.” 

“Yes, you can; it’s only you who can, by being 
you.” 

“I can?” 

“Yes, you, my darling. Joyce, will yon marry 
me?” 

She sat there with his arm about her. A steamer 
passed them, hooting gaily, its decks black with 
passengers. She watched it to the bridge and saw 
the great funnel fall slowly backwards, down, down, 
to clear the span. From the windows opposite sun- 


138 An Unknown Quantity 

light flashed; behind the flat line of houses great 
silver clouds climbed lazily the blue wall of the sky. 
‘‘Will you marry meT’ he repeated. 

She turned to him and laid her head on his 
shoulder. 

“Yes,” she murmured. 


THE EIGHTH CHAPTER 


I 

F or some weeks Evelyn told nobody of his ap¬ 
proaching marriage. To the new-found tran¬ 
quillity of his happiness he seemed to add, by means 
of secrecy, a crowning refinement of delight. To 
meet Joyce, to be with her, an affianced lover in the 
midst of ignorance and indifference, gave him a 
thrill of pleasure the exact nature of which he could 
not describe even to her. It pleased him to assume 
a mask before his friends and to court the delightful 
peril of discovery by frequenting, as usual, his old 
studio haunts as though nothing had happened or 
could, by any possibility, happen, to qualify his life 
or change his habits. So strong with him was this 
obsession, that he felt it dimly as a sacrilege that 
Joyce ^s friends should know, as she confessed they 
did, ‘‘all about him.’’ Timidly she asked whether 
she mightn’t “show him” to Hilda, and though, that 
he might not spoil her pleasure in him, he consented, 
the prospect was uncongenial, not because he de¬ 
spised the details and the companions of her daily 
life, but because he would have kept their relation¬ 
ship, had it been possible, a secret from everybody. 
Joyce prevailed upon him, however, to accompany 
her to tea at Verbena Terrace. There he was intro¬ 
duced to Hilda and to one or two carefully chosen 

139 


140 An Unknown Quantity 

friends, who sat in giggling embarrassment while he 
attempted with an unconscious but clearly discern¬ 
ible air of condescension, to put the company at its 
ease. George, was, from motives of delicacy, absent 
on this occasion, though from hints let drop in con¬ 
versation it appeared that his wounded heart was 
well upon the way to complete recovery under 
Hilda’s skilled and enthusiastic ministrations. On 
the whole, despite his forebodings, Evelyn enjoyed 
the afternoon, and when, later, in the shadowed 
street Joyce with a whispered ‘‘Oh, Harry, they did 
think you were lovely!” kissed him good night, he 
felt that it would have been unforgivably churlish in 
him to have refused so innocent a concession. 

He, in his turn, wrung from her a promise that 
they should be married at Whitsun. At first, indeed, 
he had urged an earlier date, but had surrendered 
finally to her shy protests that she wasn’t ready, 
that she mustn’t “let down” old Norris too unex¬ 
pectedly, that she had ‘ ‘ ever so many things to get. ’ ’ 
The day following Bank Holiday was therefore fixed 
between them for the ceremony, and the intervening 
time was filled for both, to the brim, with prepara¬ 
tion. As Joyce insisted upon staying at “business” 
until the very last moment, Evelyn saw but little of 
her during the day. The miornings, therefore, he oc¬ 
cupied with work to which he had returned with 
clearer, keener brains, after the temporary paralysis 
of effort that had so recently beset him, and in the 
afternoons he busied himself in accumulating for her 
a trousseau that left her wordless and breathless 
with delight. To her everything that he did was 
wonderful, each detail of arrangement for their 
future seemed more perfect than the one before. 


An Unknown Quantity 141 

until the supreme achievement of his loving fore¬ 
sight was shown to her when together they went, one 
Saturday, to see the very house he had pointed out 
to her in Church Street, now to be, as he told her, 
quite definitely, their home. 

Over this last move he had, as a matter of fact, 
just perceptibly hesitated. The rent, though low, 
was rather more than he felt he could, with wisdom, 
atford, but so intimately was the house bound up 
with the memories of his courtship that he flung 
caution to the winds, and rather than sacrifice the 
sentimental indulgence of the moment, quieted the 
murmurings of his conscience with promises of 
future economy. He was fully repaid by the vision 
of Joyce flitting from room to room with little in¬ 
articulate cries of delight, opening cupboards, lean¬ 
ing out of windows, examining with entrancing 
frowns of housewifely anxiety the recesses of the 
mysterious basement. He called the house his 
‘^wedding present’’ to her, and the wistaria on its 
walls seemed to both of them to bloom with a richer 
glory, its porch to spread a wider embrace, its very 
chimney-stacks to stand with a more conscious pride, 
as though it realised to the full its newfound dignity. 
Every evening now, they went and shared with it, 
as it were, the secret of their happiness. As they 
opened the creaking gate with a thrill of ownership, 
it smiled from every window as though to say, 
‘‘Come in, come in, you’re just the delicious, loving, 
foolish couple I’ve been expecting for the last hun¬ 
dred years”; and they smiled back at it as arm in 
arm they stood and gazed at every feature of their 
new, kind, understanding friend. Each evening they 
rearranged the rooms, hiding their childish delight 


142 An Unknown Quantity 

of possession behind serious frowns of conscious re¬ 
sponsibility, and speaking as though to every pro¬ 
posed detail of future management the house itself 
must be made a party. To Joyce the sense of owner¬ 
ship gave an eloquence that otherwise she would 
never have found. She talked, now, unceasingly, 
and for Evelyn no pleasure, it seemed, could be more 
poignant than to follow her from room to room, 
listening to her chatter, smiling at the innocence of 
her spoken thoughts, watching with fond eyes her 
bird-like flutterings to and fro, her sudden poising 
on stairs and landings as new problems of economy 
brought her to a sudden, pondering standstill. 

‘‘We shall have to be careful, you know; there 
wonT be a great deal of money to throw about,’’ he 
would say, and laugh happily to see the little pucker 
come between her eyes, and hear her answer, “Oh, 
Harry, it won’t cost anything in a house like this, I 
could run it on my head, I could really; it’ll be ever 
so cheap.” And then she would go over again on 
her fingers the arrangement of her rooms modifying 
here, altering there. 

“We’ll just have a girl to do the cooking and the 
heavy work; it won’t cost anything, you see!” 

He would kiss the serious look out of her eyes 
then, and they would lean together out of the window^ 
that overhung the little square garden, watching the 
swollen clouds sail high over the Chelsea roofs. 


n 

A week before Whitsun she wrote to him that she 
had rather a bad cold and was keeping in bed to 


An Unknown Quantity 143 

“make sure.” The news dropped like a stone into 
the waters of his tranquillity, spreading them 
splashing and broken around him. He became once 
again a prey to restlessness, and hurried at once to 
Verbena Terrace only to be told by the sympathetic 
Hilda that ‘‘Joyce wasn’t not a bit bad really, but 
mustn’t see nobody. It was really excitement, that’s 
what it was, she was such a one for getting upset.” 
Barely calmed by the assurance he dashed off to the 
doctor, dragged him, protesting, to the house, and 
waited in an agony of impatience for the verdict, 
imagining every kind of complication, and railing so 
audibly against Fate that a small crowd collected on 
the pavement and compelled him to take refuge in 
the passage. Here he stood until the doctor came to 
reassure him, with a laugh, that all was well. He 
agreed with Hilda’s diagnosis, forbade Evelyn to 
come near the house for three days, and promised a 
complete cure within a week. 

Thus it was that for the next few days Evelyn re¬ 
enacted in a modified form the scenes of his former 
vigil. He tried to be reasonable, to occupy himself, 
to think only of the future. At the moment he had 
no work on hand, having, only the week before, sent 
off the corrected proofs of his new book to the 
printers, and was at present in the mood of imagin¬ 
ative emptiness that precedes the earliest stirrings 
of new creation. In the absence of employment he 
wandered about the house in Church Street, but it 
seemed to resent his solitary rambles, reminding him 
at every step of Joyce, and making him more rest¬ 
less than ever. 

It was in this mood that he felt suddenly the de¬ 
sire to share his secret, to talk to somebody about 


144 An Unknown Quantity 

what he had hitherto hugged to himself in a jealous 
silence. He became now as anxious to confide as, 
hitherto, he had been to remain uncommunicative. 
For a moment it occurred to him to pour himself out 
on paper, to tell in a letter to his parents all that he 
had determined, but the impulse left him as swiftly 
as it came. No, his instinct had been from the first 
to say nothing at home until after he was married, 
and now, more than ever, he felt sure that his in¬ 
stinct was right. Whom then should he tell ? Auto¬ 
matically his feet turned towards Koyal Avenue, but 
before he had gone more than half-way his deter¬ 
mination weakened. He had not spoken intimately 
to Agatha Biscoe since the evening of his indecision 
to which, even now, he looked back with a feeling of 
shame. He had, on that occasion, given himself so 
completely away, that he felt it impossible to repeat 
his visit until, in his own eyes at least, he should 
have been rehabilitated, set back once again upon 
his eminence of certainty with the deed done. He 
knew well enough that he would find her sym¬ 
pathetic, helpful, but the sense of shame refused al¬ 
together to vanish, and he walked past the house 
with quickened steps. 

Still without any definite goal in view he crossed 
the King’s Koad and struck northwards, through 
Church Street, where he glanced, without pausing, at 
the expectant house, across the Fulham Koad, and 
so into the grey prosperity of South Kensington. 
Only as he drew near to Gloucester Road Station did 
it occur to him, in a flash of inspiration, that it was, 
surely, Beverley for whom he had been groping all 
this while in his mind. It was ages since they had 
met and talked, and it was just him, as he realised 


An Unknown Quantity 145 

now with compunction, he should, much earlier, have 
sought and taken into his confidence. 

Liell Beverley lived on one of the roofs of 
Campden Hill. To describe his dwelling thus is to 
be guilty of no exaggeration, for the two rooms of 
his habitation had been constructed by some dead 
eccentric, years before, between the chimney-stacks 
of an old coach-house standing in the shadow of the 
water-tower that tops the ridge between Netting Hill 
and Kensington. The coach-house itself had long 
ago been converted into a studio, but the new owner 
had neglected to occupy the timber shanty on his 
roof, and Beverley, in search of an economical re¬ 
treat, had found in this high-swung cabin a refuge 
that satisfied all requirements. Here he had settled 
to brood, in bearded and emaciated solitude, over the 
dwarfed and spreading maze of London, watching 
like a younger Teufelsdrockh the sluggish move¬ 
ments of confused life in the tangle of streets below 
him, waiting in patience, day by day, for inspiration 
always just withheld, descending at night from his 
fastness, for talk and company, like a hermit beast 
for water, into the jungle of humanity beneath the 
hill. For years now he had watched and pondered 
in his tower, tending with devotion the clear flame 
of his ambition, keeping it bright and steady, but 
never finding just the fuel with which to feed it into 
the beacon blaze he had set his heart on lighting. 

To be in some measure the interpreter of the 
London above which he dwelt, to touch and disen¬ 
tangle, and draw together the manifold threads of 
life so tantalisingly beneath his hand yet so inex¬ 
tricably tied, to weave from them a great patterned 
tapestry of art and understanding, such and no less 


146 An Unknown Quantity 

was the achievement to which he had devoted his 
life, the goal from which he was now as far as he had 
been in the beginning. 

The approach to his strange retreat was up an out¬ 
side staircase, the old way to the stable loft, ex¬ 
tended, by a short flight, to the leads and the added 
wooden structure that now surmounted them. As 
Evelyn climbed he felt the cares and interests of 
every day drop from him with an almost physical 
sense of release, as before his eyes the too close per¬ 
sistence of houses, streets, and squares dwindled to 
a chequered map of blue, and grey, and green. At 
the top he paused for a moment to take breath, 
turned, hat in hand, the fresh wind playing round 
his head, to all four corners of the Heaven, knocked 
and entered. 

A visitor stepping into the room for the first time 
must have likened it to a lighthouse lantern, per¬ 
suaded to the impression by the three large windows, 
one in each of the outer walls, through which, from 
a distance, nothing but sky was visible. The whole 
of the small interior was bathed in light, which com¬ 
ing, as it did, from every side but one, created an 
illusion of clear and spacior.s emptiness, an illusion 
helped by the scanty furnishing and the light tone of 
the painted woodwork. In the wall opposite the 
point of entry a second door led to the inner room 
and beside it stood a tall black stove, tethered, as it 
were, to the roof by a long tin chimney that vanished 
after accomplishing a sudden rectangular bend, 
through the ceiling. Before this stove, between it 
and the table, was a large wicker arm-chair with 
its back to the entrance, and above it, as he entered. 


147 


An Unknown Quantity 

a thin, blue, eddying cloud of tobacco smoke be¬ 
trayed the position of an otherwise invisible host. 

As the door opened the wicker chair creaked, the 
smoke cloud shook violently and dispersed, and 
Beverley’s head appeared, twisted sideways, peering 
into the room. At sight of Evelyn it was with¬ 
drawn to its former station of invisibility, a foot 
shot out and grappled a chair which it dexterously 
drew towards the hearth, and a voice said, ‘‘Hallo, 
Evelyn! ’ ’ 

His visitor, throwing his hat on to the table, took 
out his pipe and walked over to the nearest window. 
Again the voice sounded. 

“Come and sit down.” 

“No thanks, I want to look out over your king¬ 
dom; it’s almost reward enough for the detestable 
climb you give your guests.” 

“Well, have some tobacco, then!” 

‘ ‘ Thanks. ’ ’ 

Evelyn stood, absently filling his pipe, gazing 
down at the endless tangle of streets that stretched 
interminably to the shadowy horizon of tree-grown 
hills that marked the beginnings of open country 
beyond Putney. Instinctively his eyes swept to the 
left and fastened upon the four great chimneys of 
the power-station that stood between him and Clap- 
ham. For the time he forgot his host and let his 
thoughts play round the idea of the future that was, 
in fact, so close but in imagination seemed still so 
unbelievably distant. 

Beverley turned again in his chair. 

“How’s work!” he asked. 

Evelyn brought his wandering fancies back, with 
a jerk, to the present. 


148 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘Oh, all right,” he replied; “IVe just got another 
book through; sent the proofs back last Tuesday.” 

Beverley grunted. “It looks to me, young man, 
as though you are well on the road to overpro¬ 
duction. Whenever I see you youVe always just 
finished a book and I^m always just beginning one. 
You find me as usual at the first line of the first para¬ 
graph of the first chapter. I sometimes think I 
shall write a story in the manner of Henry James 
and it shall deal entirely with the difficulty of be¬ 
ginning a masterpiece.” 

Evelyn stood silent and inattentive, his eyes still 
fixed upon the smoking landmark of his hopes. 
There was a prolonged pause, at the end of which 
he turned sharply into the room as though he were 
making the effort consciously, steadying himself for 
a plunge. 

“I say, Liell,” he burst out, “I’m going to be 
married!” The chair by the stove creaked pro- 
testingly; his host’s voice sounded, for once, 
startled. 

“The devil you are! Anyone I know*?” 

“No.” 

“Thank the Lord for that; I had a horrid mo¬ 
ment of thinking it might be ‘Bunny’!” 

“ ‘Bunny’! what on earth put that into your 
head?” 

“Oh, I don’t knoAv; perhaps she did: anyhow it’s 
not, so that’s all right.” 

“She’s nobody who’s ever been in my life before, 
nobody that my friends have ever met or dreamed 
of meeting.” 

“Better and better! She comes just in time.” 

“What on earth are you driving at?” 


An Unknown Quantity 149 

“My dear Evelyn, IVe been watching you for 
months, and I’m pretty clear-sighted. You’re very 
nearly bound hand and foot and, to make matters 
worse, you don’t realise it. You’re young, you’re 
popular, you’re brilliant, and you absorb atmos¬ 
phere like a sponge. You’ve elected to live in 
Chelsea and in a few years, if you’re not careful, 
you’ll he all that’s bad and intolerable in Chelsea.” 

Evelyn started to protest, but he was cut short. 

“Oh, I know there are geniuses in Chelsea, that 
many delightful and gifted people live there without 
coming to any harm, but they’re not the people you 
meet. They keep away from the ^pushes’—^you 
don’t. You’re rapidly developing into the idol of 
the inferior, you’ve got a crowd round you smother¬ 
ing you like flies, influencing you. They can’t resist 
novelty, and you’re a novelty just within their 
comprehension. They’ll risk anything to be in front 
with a possible success—so long as the success isn’t 
generally recognised!” 

The outburst ceased as suddenly as it had begun 
and Beverley subsided into a brooding silence. 
Evelyn, who had sat down at the beginning of what, 
he could not help feeling, was an utterly unprovoked 
attack, remained silent until the flow of his friend’s 
words trickled naturally away. He was conscious, 
chiefly, of a feeling of irritation that Liell should 
be in so pontifical a humor just when he had come to 
speak of Joyce. 

His annoyance found words at last in a mild 
challenge. 

“My dear Liell,” he said, “you’re round at Swan 
Walk just as much as I am, rather more so as a 
matter of fact.” 


150 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘I? Oh, I can stand it simply because I’m a fail¬ 
ure with nothing to lose; simply because I can treat 
’em as I treat women, go to ’em when the craving’s 
on me, and run when I’m satisfied.” 

“And you think I can’t?” 

“My dear fellow, I know you can’t. You believe 
you can. and in fostering that belief they find their 
strongest weapon. They tell you you’re detached— 
that ass Prosser did the other night—so do the re¬ 
viewers. Of course you’re detached, you can’t help 
being, but in the devil’s name what fromf from 
experiences you’ve never had! when will you young 
writers learn that art is not the result of negative 
emotions?” 

Evelyn was goaded to thrust back. “Perhaps 
when you older writers have shown us the right 
road!” he retorted, and regretted, as soon as the 
words were spoken, the cheapness of the sneer. 

“Touche! I deserve the flick, but it doesn’t 
silence me! You know you ought really to take it 
as a comphment that I say these things to you: 
I only do it because I think you’re big enough and 
important enough to stand them.” 

Evelyn smiled. “Well, at least I’m incurring no 
further condemnation, it seems, by marrying!” he 
said, in an attempt to wrench the conversation 
round to the only subject that, in his present mood, 
held any interest for him. “You approve?” 

“Of course I do!” Liell returned the smile and 
was off again on another gallop of words. “But 
isn’t it typical of you! here you are, the first 
emotion you feel, the first real emotion, you give in 
to. It’s just as I thought, you’ve no imagination, 
only a highly developed detective instinct! ’ ’ 


An Unknown Quantity 151 

^^All right, granting that IVe deserved this 
tirade—though for the life of me I can’t see that I 
have—at least admit that as I am plumb in the 
middle of this new experience, you may as well 
recognise the situation. Am I right or am I wrong? 
You start by approving my decision and then go 
out of your way to sneer at it.” 

Beverley got up slowly from his chair and walked 
to the window; when next he spoke there was a 
note of softness in his voice. 

‘‘My dear Evelyn,” he said, “you mustn’t take 
my grievances too seriously. I’ve got more than 
most people. I suppose they’re the punishment and 
the reward of my solitude; but really my bark is 
worse than my bite; in fact I haven’t any bite at 
all. Of course I’m glad and I do congratulate you.” 

He paused, knocked his pipe out noisily on the 
window-sill and proceeded to refill it. 

“You’re just the sort of man,” he continued, 
“who has to marry sooner or later. Like most of 
the young men who write over-intellectualised books 
you’re a sentimentalist at heart. You keep that 
kind of emotion as far as possible out of your work 
and as a result you’re driven to find an outlet for 
it in your life. Don’t think that because my own 
needs are different I can’t understand. Women to 
me are a medicine, a tonic; you needn’t raise your 
eyebrows, you’ve sampled sex yourself, and at least 
my medicines are all labelled, corked and displayed 
very openly for sale. Nevertheless, I do see your 
own particular necessity every bit as clearly as you 
do, possibly more clearly, but I see too that you’ve 
got to face it with your eyes open. This is going 
to be your great test, Evelyn, and it’s going to make 




152 An Unknown Quantity 

of you either a free man or a prisoner more con¬ 
fined than ever. IVe got an idea that yon think 
of this marriage of yonrs rather as yon think of 
a new book, something to be finished, packed off 
to the publisher, and forgotten—except for the 
laudatory notices to follow. If you look at it like 
that, for God’s sake stop while there’s time! It 
may do all sorts of things to you, but it won’t just 
do nothing at all. It may give you wider horizons, 
it may bring you depths of sympathy and feeling 
which you lack at present, and if it does it will do 
you nothing but good. On the other hand, you may 
treat it all as so much ‘ copy, ’ and then Heaven help 
you! Don’t for the Lord’s sake, become one of 
those young men who leave a book to mark every 
mile of their spiritual and emotional progress! 
You’ve got to be weaned from the more violent 
sensations of life before you write about them, not 
still sucking.” 

‘‘You mean you don’t believe I can keep my life 
and my work separate 

“Well, can you? many a better man has failed. 
Is this new experience to give you knowledge or 
only a thicker cloak of illusion? I suppose you’ll 
say you’ve ‘faced’ that possibility too? I wonder 
whether you’ve ever actually imagined marriage? 
Oh, yes, I know all about ‘Distortions/ that’s all 
very well for ‘Bunny,’ and Stephen, and Doris 
Carter, but after all it’s playing with loaded dice. 
Can you, I wonder, live through even the simplest 
marriage?” 

Evelyn greedily seized the proffered opportunity. 
He had come to talk of Joyce and, so far, he had 
done nothing but listen to speeches. He shifted 


An Unknown Quantity 153 

irritably in his chair. ‘‘Oh, my dear Liell!^^ he 
burst out, “don^t, please, go on asking rhetorical 
questions! How on earth can I tell what marriage’ll 
do to me or I to marriage! What, for the matter 
of that, do I care? I want to marry Joyce, and 
I’m going to marry her; there’s nothing in it more 
abstract than that. What the devil can you, poor 
miserable you, know about it? why, you haven’t 
even met her! She’s like nobody you’ve ever seen 
in your life, she’s like nobody l^ve ever seen, so 
fresh, so unspoilt, so—so—absolutely without guile. 
She’s not, you know, the kind of girl I’ve been 
accustomed to meet, she’s-” He checked him¬ 

self suddenly as though, trusting to cross, by dint 
of sheer speed, a dangerous piece of road, he had 
realised with a shock that his tyres were punctured. 
“She’s-” 

“You mean you’re marrying out of your class, 
what your relations would call ‘beneath you’?” 
bluntlj^ suggested Beverley who found his friend’s 
prolonged hesitation embarrassing and rather 
foolish. 

“Oh, my dear fellow, that’s all snobbery! damn 
it all-” 

“But true, eh? why boggle at a remarkably apt 
phrase only because you don’t like the people who 
habitually use it? You have, rightly or wrongly, 
certain inherited traditions; you have been accus¬ 
tomed to choose as your friends men and women 
who by education and, sometimes, by sympathy, 
belong to the same tiny corner of the social pattern 
as yourself. Your affianced bride, I gather, does 
not; am I right?” 

“Well, if you put it like that, I suppose you are.” 





154 An Unknown Quantity 

“If I put it like that? How, I wonder, did you 
‘put it’?” 

“All right then, I am marrying beneath me if you 
insist on looking at life as the elevation sheet of an 
architect’s drawing with me about half-way up at 
the drawing-room floor and Joyce aspiring from 
somewhere in the basement! She, at present, works 
for her living as a typist—and why the devil 
shouldn’t she?” 

“My dear Evelyn, didn’t I tell you only ten min¬ 
utes ago that I’m relieved and delighted? You 
may be saved from the perils of inbreeding after 
all!” 

Evelyn was not to be silenced by any such show 
of acquiescence. “Don’t you see how it simplifies 
matters?” he asked. “Can’t you understand how 
splendidly it solves all the problems you yourself 
have just been raising and scattering in my path? 
I believe that all my old distaste of marriage sprang 
from the fear of its indirect complications, the old 
shibboleths furbished up with the wedding presents, 
the claims and fetters everywhere. It wasn’t the 
essential relationship, the permanence, that I dis¬ 
liked, but the whole scheme of new, diffused respon¬ 
sibilities to people who would, without my choice, 
come into my life, who would produce circumstances 
over which I should have no real control, into the 
acceptance of which I should have been lured by 
the prospect of the great, dazzling, overshadowing 
prize. Here, I’ve avoided all that. I’m getting 
Joyce fresh and free from Heaven. What liberty 
do I surrender? with what chains do I bind myself 
except those of loyalty? don’t you see how wonder¬ 
fully I keep my freedom? She knows nothing, has 


An Unknown Quantity 155 

experienced nothing, brings not even a mother 
or a father with her, but comes to me stripped 
of all prejudice, all bias, all inheritance. She looks 
to me for everything; she believes in me utterly, 
is willing to take my word in every contingency, 
every new adventure.’’ 

‘‘I take it you mean to tell me that you are em¬ 
barking upon marriage with the intention of show¬ 
ing your wife the way she should go? Well, I 
shall watch the process with intense interest. 
Mould her to what shape you like, and I’ll take 
off my hat to you—and shed a tear for her. Still, 
there are other possibilities, so be careful!” 

‘‘What do you mean?” 

“That, my dear fellow, is for you to find out. 
You’ve got your ‘theme’; let’s see what you’ll make 
of it. I have an uncomfortable mistrust of the doc¬ 
trinaire in love—as in everything else.” 

“How you do love sorting people into the terms 
of a problem! ’ ’ Evelyn laughed gaily; the last few 
minutes had put him once more into a mood of 
perfect good humor with the world. “The whole 
thing, surely, as as clear as daylight. I’m in love, 
and I’m going to be married, and I’m devilish lucky 
to have got the girl I have got. Good heavens! you’d 
have been the last man to approve if I’d told you I 
was going to make an ‘ordinary’ marriage! The 
sooner you see her, my boy, the better for that 
tangled, torturous mind of yours; you shall be the 
only guest at the wedding! There now, see how I 
forgive your aspersions!” 

The sense of elation remained with him, un¬ 
dimmed, as an hour later, after much talk round 
and round, he walked home. Beverley’s words, for 



156 An Unknown Quantity 

all their bluntness, had expressed the feeling that, 
for some time, had been lurking in the background 
of his consciousness. Of course he must face the 
truth with his eyes open, must be guilty of no pre¬ 
tence, even at the risk of being on speaking terms, 
for however short a while, with snobbery. It was 
just like Liell, with his perverse love of posing as 
a champion of the conventions, to phrase it as he 
had done. “Beneath him!’’ well, let it be! why 
should he be frightened of a phrase? wasn’t he just 
making the free “gesture,” taking the road to the 
larger liberty? Man and woman cut adrift from 
bonds, and shams, and catchwords, just that, surely 
the only honest way for the artist and the man? 
Together they would be free, free to face the reality 
of life, free to build for themselves a solid rela¬ 
tionship of truth and beauty. The talk had done 
him a world of good. He had got “square” with 
himself, had forced, at last, into the open that tiny, 
microscopic doubt that had, he now saw, been 
chafing, just perceptibly, the fine fabric of his happi¬ 
ness. He brushed it aside with a laugh and an arm 
flung wide in the dusk. He made no attempt to 
ignore its existence; oh! he knew the bogey was 
there, and rejoiced in the knowledge, because now 
that he had faced it and found it but a turnip- 
headed monster, he felt adventurous, unconven¬ 
tional, courageous. He saw himself taking up the 
challenge of life, and as he sang his way through 
the streets it was to a tune of mastery and triumph. 


BOOK II 


JOYCE ACTS 




THE NINTH CHAPTER 


I 

VELYN glanced round the dinner table and 
-Li felt, for the first time since their arrival, 
tolerably at ease. Things really were ‘‘shaking 
down’’ remarkably well. His mother was smiling 
quite naturally and contentedly. The look of appre¬ 
hension that he fancied he had detected when she 
greeted them, that afternoon, in the hall, was with¬ 
drawn. No trace of it was perceptible, except, 
perhaps, for an occasional sweep of the bright, 
kindly eyes towards that strange daughter-in-law 
who had been flung at her, as it were, through the 
post, so quickly had her arrival followed upon the 
warning, explanatory letter. His father, as usual 
silent but not more so than usual, ate on as though 
nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Rachel, 
talkative, flippant, with the cool, hard edges show¬ 
ing through her words as they did through her 
dress, was, as she always was, slightly irritating, 
but quite obviously at ease. She too sat there un¬ 
moved, rallying her great, smooth, healthy husband 
and patronising her brother, keeping embarrassment 
at bay by the mere unbroken volume of her con¬ 
versation. As for Joyce, she was being quite won¬ 
derful. In the clothes he had chosen for her she 
looked charming, with an air of timid appeal that 

159 


i6o An Unknown Quantity 

had gone straight, as he had intended it should do, 
to his mother’s insatiable heart. She sat perfectly 
still, saying nothing, smiling at Eachel’s endless 
rattle, touching secretly with her hand, now and 
again, her husband’s knee, and drawing from the 
contact, as he could see, strength and encourage¬ 
ment. Her silence, born though it might be of 
utter terror, took on admirably the appearance of 
that modesty which, at Stonechurch, was considered 
a necessary adjunct of every bride. Nobody was 
surprised at her shyness. Eachel and Evelyn 
accepted it without question because they realised 
the appalling difficulty of her position; her new 
parents because they would have been disagreeably 
aware of self-assurance in a three-weeks-old 
daughter-in-law; Freddie because, well, because he 
was never surprised at anything more subtle than 
an off-day at golf or an unaccountable fluctuation 
in the share market. 

Mrs. Eendle had, as a matter of fact, early de¬ 
cided to ‘‘make the best of it.” The determination 
had come after an internal struggle of compara¬ 
tively short duration but dreadful intensity. Love 
for her son had planted the flag of victory with un¬ 
shaking hand on the field of battle. The forces of 
disappointment, anxiety, hostility, were routed now 
once and for all, and she was not the kind of 
woman to allow them to creep back stealthily into 
the stronghold. The fight had been bitter and had 
drawn from her cries of anguish which she remem¬ 
bered now with remorse and a feeling akin to 
shame. The letter had been, there was no denying 
it, a dreadful shock. She had taken it to her room 
and stayed with it all the morning, tearful at first, 


An Unknown Quantity i6i 

half stunned, and then, when her daughter had come 
to her, resentful. She had upbraided Eachel, un¬ 
justly as she now realised, holding her responsible, 
turning on her with fury. 

‘‘It^s your fault, yours!’’ she had cried; ‘‘why 
couldn’t you look after him and keep him from 
women like that! I never liked his being there all 
alone in London, but I comforted myself that you 
were there, and now—see what you’ve done! it’ll 
kill me, kill me, after all my plans for him! ’ ’ 

Eachel had not borne the rebuke patiently. 
“Eeally, mother,” she had replied, “do be reason¬ 
able. Of course it’s a blow to you, it’s a blow to 
all of us, but I can’t see how I’m to blame. If 
you’d ever seen Evelyn in London you wouldn’t 
ask why I didn’t ‘look after him,’ as you put it. 
Much thanks I should have got! Why, even as it 
was, in spite of all my efforts to avoid the appear¬ 
ance of interfering, I only got hold of him now 
and again with the utmost difficulty, and when he 
did come his condescension was so apparent that 
I felt it really an unkindness to have him in the 
house! After all, I do owe Freddie something. 
The poor fellow never knew whether Evelyn was 
talking of writers or patent golf-balls—so many of 
the names are outre, you know, of the writers I 
mean, and then it used to worry him to think that 
there was a new make on the market of which he 
had never heard!” 

“But I thought you knew such interesting people. 
I’m sure I’ve met quite distinguished men when I’ve 
been staying with you.” 

“Oh, but mother dear, they were all successful 
men, they all play golf, and I didn’t think I could 


162 An Unknown Quantity 

insult my clever brother by throwing him into com¬ 
pany like that/’ 

‘‘I think you’re very unkind about Evelyn. The 
poor boy is working so hard, and I’m sure he’s dis¬ 
tinguished enough for anybody to meet! He’s 
dreadfully shy.” 

‘‘Possibly, but other people don’t always take it 
like that!” 

“If only you’d been sympathetic he would never 
have married this girl. ’ ’ 

“Possibly not, if only in an attempt to shock us. 
As things are, the union is, at least, regular.” 

‘ ‘ Kachel! how can you say such dreadful things! ’ ’ 

“Perhaps she’ll turn out to be not such a bad 
little thing. Evelyn’s got quite a lot of natural 
good sense, and I don’t suppose he’s succeeded in 
smothering all of it.” 

“But what do we hnow about her?” Mrs. Bendle’s 
tone was querulous. “Dear Evelyn is so secretive, 
so often I don’t know what he really thinks. Oh, 
why didn’t he tell me, I should have understood!” 
A sudden fierceness swept the indignity of the plaint 
into a sturdier, nobler passion of resentment. 

“I’ve relied on you so much, Kachel, with the 
dear boy there so far away, and now this has 
happened! ’ ’ 

“If it shakes him into reahty, so much the better. 
No, mother,” quelling a rising protest, “I’m not 
going to join your wailing chorus; it’s time Evelyn 
began to find out things for himself. I only hope 
this girl’s got character enough to stand up to him.” 

Strangely enough, despite her own part in it of 
troubled uncertainty, Mrs. Rendle took from this 
interview with her daughter an unexpected but 


An Unknown Quantity 163 

quite definite sense of relief. EachePs caustic atti¬ 
tude towards her brother had strengthened in her, 
almost unconsciously, the desire and the readiness 
to champion his choice, to believe that what he had 
done was all for the best and necessary for his 
ultimate happiness. 

Her husband had failed to give her even this 
negative assistance. Evelyn had always been, pre¬ 
eminently, his mother’s son, and his father’s atti¬ 
tude had consistently been one of slightly amused, 
slightly impatient intolerance. The boy had grown 
to rely on his mother’s sympathy. He had never, 
it is true, found her an intellectual companion on 
his own level, nor had he derived from her directly 
his literary talents, but what in her took the form 
of sentimental dreaminess had become in him a more 
definitely artistic temperament, and there had 
sprung up between them, and grown from year to 
year, a very real and precious bond of emotional 
understanding. It had long been a habit with him 
to confide in her rather than in his father, to rely 
for understanding on her affection even when he 
knew that her comprehension failed. Mr. Kendle 
early realised this and withdrew, without bitterness, 
more and more, into the interests of his garden 
and his fields, devoting himself to the beloved 
routine of farmer and squire. To Evelyn he was 
less a person than a part of the remembered back¬ 
ground of Stonechurch, inseparable from the trees 
and the downs and the weather-stained roofs and 
walls of the house. He never attempted to exert 
even the mildest form of parental authority, never 
offered advice, never displayed annoyance. Evelyn 
belonged to his wife and though, in his heart, he 


164 An Unknown Quantity 

was proud of his son, no sign of approval was ever 
allowed to escape from him. When, therefore, the 
fatal letter arrived, he raised his eyebrows, kissed 
his wife’s forehead, asked when the ‘‘boy” was 
coming, and then withdrew to superintend the thin¬ 
ning of the Home Farm copse. 

# # # ♦ ♦ 

And now suddenly, miraculously, everything was 
all right. There at the dinner table she realised, 
with the sense of a physical weight being lifted 
from her heart, that her apprehensions had been 
almost groundless. Almost, not entirely, for Joyce 
wasn’t, of course, the wife she would have chosen 
for her son. Still she was simple, and affectionate, 
and quiet; above all, she quite obviously worshipped 
Evelyn. In the warmth of that one flaming fact 
every other consideration faded and died. 

The actual meeting had come soon, but luckily, 
not too soon after the first shock of the news. 
There'had been a perceptible respite, a space for 
thought, a chance to accept mentally the inevitable 
before the full weight of the reality must be met. 
Mrs. Kendle had never been a woman to give in 
abjectly to chagrin or injured pride. Her disap¬ 
pointment had vented itself upon her daughter: 
selfishness had spent itself in one burst of angry 
weeping. To maintain unspoiled the relationship 
with her son, to feel their mutual love and trust 
unshaken, was all that really mattered. He must 
be championed against Eachel, justified to his 
father. Evelyn was all she had, all that, in her 
inmost heart, she believed she cared for, and nothing 
must be allowed to come between them. Joyce was 


An Unknown Quantity 165 

his wife, the potential mother of his children, of her 
grandchildren. 

In this mood of stoic calm she had awaited the 
moment of initiation, and how generously, she now 
realised, had loyalty and trust been rewarded! yes, 
with full measure pressed down and flowing over! 
What a moment of joy it had been when Evelyn 
had run to her and taken her in his arms, unhesi¬ 
tating, undoubting. Nothing was changed between 
them, no shadow of estrangement chequered the old 
sweet sunlight, and in the new assurance of under¬ 
standing with what willingness had she turned to 
the shy, doubting girl at his side. Her heart had 
gone out, in a determination of acceptance, to that 
appealing figure. 

Perhaps it would not be so difficult, after all, to 
champion the irrevocable. She kissed her daughter- 
in-law with all the passion of self-immolation. 


II 

For a moment, when the women withdrew after 
dinner, embarrassment, lurking in the shadows of 
the drawing-room, threatened the trio with suffo¬ 
cation. 

Rain, threatening all day, had come now to darken 
the evening prematurely, and the garden offered no 
way of escape. Gusts of sleet blew against the 
windows across which the curtains were not yet 
drawn. The artificial twilight of low clouds, pierced 
liere and there by shafts of watery sunset, filled the 
room with melancholy. 

Joyce sat down, self-consciously, by the small 


i66 An Unknown Quantity 

wood fire that burned and crackled sulkily with that 
air of reluctant surprise exhibited by all fires lit 
in July. She felt, in the big room, grey with the 
lowering evening, less at ease with these two women 
than she had done in the superficially more terri¬ 
fying, but essentially more friendly, atmosphere of 
dinner. It was as though, suddenly, she were naked 
to prying, hostile eyes. She sat still and silent, stir¬ 
ring her cotfee with just that faint air of aggression 
inseparable from her sense of social insecurity. To 
her mother-in-law and to Eachel she presented, at 
that moment, so perfect a picture of the ‘‘genteel,” 
that they both felt instinctively ashamed of noticing 
it. She too was conscious of a sense of irritation 
mingled with discomfort at what, with her quick 
intuitions, she knew to be their disapproval. It only 
added, however, to her awkwardness. Her little 
finger projected stiffly outwards from her hand, that 
little finger which, beneath the loving criticism of 
her husband’s glances, she was beginning already so 
admirably to control. In every line and contour of 
her body she showed the conscious effort of the 
“young lady” at a surburban deportment lesson. 

Mrs. Eendle made a brave effort to loosen the 
bonds of constraint. “How melancholy the room 
looks to-night,” she said. “Eachel dear, I think 
you might ring to have the curtains drawn. Won’t 
you come nearer the fire, my dear?” she added, 
turning with a smile to Joyce; “it’s so cold and 
miserable: really it seems more like March than 
June.” 

“Thank you, I’m quite comfortable where I am,” 
Joyce mincingly replied. There was in her manner 
the faintest suspicion of “bridling.” 


An Unknown Quantity 167 

With the exclusion of the watery daylight and 
the advent of lamps an air of cosiness and warmth 
came into the room; but the shadow of social dis¬ 
comfort still lay broad and forbidding upon the 
three women at the fire. It had, if anything, in the 
last few minutes, grown more profound. 

It was Eachel, at last, who succeeded, involun¬ 
tarily, in flinging it back into the outer darkness. 
She could never sit long in any company without 
speaking, and now a sense of duty reinforced her 
natural desire to talk. She broke the silence with 
the air of one leading a forlorn hope. 

‘‘My dear Joyce, whatever have you done to 
Evelyn? IVe never seen marriage so change a man. 
Why, he’s quite smart and brushed up. No, it’s no 
good frowning at me, mother dear, you know per¬ 
fectly well how awful he used to look, at least you 
would know if you weren’t a dear old doting parent. 
My dear, he used to come to Wilton Street, when¬ 
ever he did come, looking like nothing on earth. 
I had to leave a description of him with the butler so 
that he shouldn’t be turned away from the front 
door! Eeally I think I shall have to describe his 
clothes to you, so that you can go through his ward¬ 
robe some day when he’s out and burn that par¬ 
ticular suit—it’s not worth giving away.” 

Joyce’s eyes blazed. In that moment she forgot 
to be genteel; forgot Mrs. Eendle sitting on the 
sofa; she knew only that Eachel was making fun of 
her husband and she suspected, vaguely, that she 
was, in some “clever” way, making fun of her too. 
All through dinner she had been conscious of dis¬ 
liking this new sister-in-law, and now the suppressed 
resentment rushed into a sudden gush of words. 


i68 An Unknown Quantity 

All the mingled feelings with which, hitherto, she 
had regarded her husband, wonder, liking, gratitude, 
swept together into a lightning sense of protection 
that had in it, too, a queer element of self-defence. 

think he^s wonderful!’’ she said, the words 
tumbling breathlessly out; ‘‘he’s ever so clever, and 
I don’t think it matters a bit what he wears!” 

Mrs. Eendle’s heart gave a great leap. At that 
moment she felt the whole of her motherly soul go 
out to Joyce. To the full capacity of her almost 
insatiable maternity she accepted, without qualifi¬ 
cation, Evelyn’s choice. No longer need she merely 
champion the irrevocable, at last she could approve 
and love. Tears came to her eyes and through them 
she smiled happily. 

“Evelyn is wonderful,” she agreed. “You 
mustn’t mind what Kachel says, she’s only joking.” 

Joyce remained irreconcilable. 

“I don’t like her to make jokes about she 

said. Eachel was too thankful for the sudden clear¬ 
ing of the air to feel resentment at her sister-in-law’s 
tone. 

“Well, my dear,” she replied, “if one doesn’t 
make jokes about him, one must take him seriously, 
and I’m not clever enough to do that. You’ve got 
your work cut out to civilise him, but you’ve begun 
well, and I believe you’ll do it.” 

“I don’t want him ever different from what he 
is,” Joyce answered. But secretly she felt elated 
at the suggestion that she might actually be sup¬ 
posed to influence so wonderful a person as her 
husband. 

When, five minutes later, Evelyn joined them, 
he found his wife and his mother deep in intimacies. 


An Unknown Quantity 169 

Racliel was at the piano playing softly to herself. 
There was an air in the room of placid contentment. 


ni 

‘‘I ^do like your mother!’’ 

Joyce said the words quietly, intensely, as though 
after the long silence they were the crown of pro- 
foundest thought. 

Evelyn pressed her arm and smiled. 

‘‘You’ve won a most amazing victory, my dar¬ 
ling: she’s absolutely bowled over. Didn’t I tell 
you, ages ago, that she couldn’t help loving you?” 

“She’s a dear, and she’s been ever so kind to me: 
the sort of kindness that’s nice; not just being kind 
on purpose.” 

The words were utterly inadequate to express her 
meaning, but Evelyn understood the mixture of shy¬ 
ness and aggressive dignity that prompted them. 

“I don’t think your sister’s very gone on me,” 
she continued. 

“Which means, I suppose, that you’re not very 
‘gone on’ her? I don’t think it’s altogether your 
fault, Kachel’s not the most tactful of women, but 
she’s not a bad sort.” 

“She’s always laughing at you and saying spite¬ 
ful things.” 

“That’s her way of taking a holiday from 
Freddie. He’s a good old soul, but you may have 
noticed that he’s not subtle. Eachel has to keep 
all her brain for other people, and as a result she’s 
apt to expend it on personalities. It’s not unusual, 
you know, for people who have only a limited space 


170 An Unknown Quantity 

in which to exercise their intellectual activities, to 
be a little bit spiteful. Well, I don^t suppose we 
shall see much of her in London.’’ 

A tiny frown came between her eyes and he real¬ 
ised with a sharp pang that he was talking, as he 
would have put it, ‘‘above her head.” He was 
still too happy in his possession of her to admit even 
the vaguest sense of disappointment. Tenderness 
filled his heart and he kissed her suddenly, drowning 
himself in passion. 

“My dear, my dear,” he said, “I love you more 
and more each day. You make everything perfect 
—the wind, and the hills, and the grass; you make 
me feel that they are all mine as you are mine.” 

They sat for a while in silence, close together, 
gazing down from the bare, cropped hill-side to the 
dozing roofs of Stonechurch half drowned below 
them in a deep sea of elms. 

With his hand he turned her face to his. 

“You are happy?” he asked. 

‘ ‘ Of course I am! ’ ’ There was absolute sincerity 
in the words and in the smile that accompanied 
them. 

“You don’t regret having married me?” 

“Not now that I know your mother; I felt I’d 
done something wrong before.” 

“How could it be wrong to make me happy?” 

“I felt you might be sorry. Oh, Harry, am I 
really going to be a help to you like you said I 
was once?” 

“You are a help already, my darling; you’re an 
eternal blessing and wonder and pride.” 

“Your mother said I could help you, and—^and_ 

somehow I believed 7ier.” 


An Unknown Quantity 171 

‘‘That’s as much as to say that you don’t believe 
me!” he laughed; “if you’re not careful I shall be 
jealous of my mother!” 

“Don’t be silly! she told me all sorts of things 
about you when you were a baby.” 

With which seemingly illogical but, to her, appar¬ 
ently satisfying rejoinder, she relapsed once more 
into silence. 

Mrs. E-endle had indeed, since that first evening, 
taken Joyce into the inmost recesses of her heart. 
She had surrendered utterly and there had been 
no looking back. She had talked endlessly of 
Evelyn, had spoken of all her hopes and fears, of 
his cleverness, his goodness, his weakness, and 
Joyce had listened, saying little, with an appearance 
of understanding and a simplicity of affection that 
had won the complete confidence of the older woman. 
Already, in the warmth of this new intimacy, she 
had put forth shoots of new growth. In ten short 
days she had developed, clearly, a sense of greater 
security. Her shyness, though it had not vanished 
entirely, was less embarrassing, her air of gentility 
less obvious. With Kachel she was, indeed, still 
awkward and mistrustful, and though her sister-in- 
law tried honestly to come to terms she had found, 
up to the present, a blank wall stopping her 
approach, a wall bristling all over with sharp little 
points that threatened groping hands. Joyce’s in¬ 
stinctive dislike of her dated from the first evening 
of their meeting. Rachel had laughed at her hus¬ 
band, and in the sudden generosity of her resent¬ 
ment antagonism had taken root. But the instinct 
that had told her, on the occasion of that first cross¬ 
ing of swords, that her defence was not purely altru- 


172 An Unknown Quantity 

istic, liad became, in the days that followed, more and 
more a conscious persuasion that she too was part 
object of the laughter. The readiness to take otfence 
that lay always dormant in her relations with her 
husband’s family, pricked restless, wakeful ears at 
Rachel’s approach. She couldn’t get over the idea 
that her sister-in-law was, from behind a carefully 
adjusted mask of friendship, looking down on her. 
The results of this suspicion, though they only 
showed themselves outwardly in small “gauche- 
ries,” might have been visible to an observant on¬ 
looker at work already, dimly, but quite definitely 
upon the general structure of her character. They 
joined forces, strangely enough with influences 
already operative within her as a result of that new, 
delightful intimacy into which she had been drawn 
by Mrs. Rendle, with influences, too, less obvious 
but no less strong, impinging upon her from the 
world of daily life into which her marriage had 
thrown her. Naturally sensitive and quickly obser¬ 
vant she had seen, at once, as soon as the wedding 
was an accomplished fact, that mastery of the 
changed conditions of her existence was not to be 
the easy matter that she, and to a still greater 
degree, Hilda, had imagined. The extent of the dif¬ 
ferences in habit, language and general manner of 
life was far greater than she had ever imagined 
possible. To learn them, to become easily familiar 
with them, would, she now saw, involve an amount of 
study, a degree of concentration, far more intense 
than she had foreseen. Still, she was not, as she put 
it to herself, “one to give in.” These things could 
be learnt and she intended, most certainly, to leara 
them. The first moment of surprise once past, she 


An Unknown Quantity 173 

felt competent to deal with them, if not at once, at 
least within a reasonable period. She would not, she 
stubbornly decided, be ‘‘looked down on.’^ To avoid 
that humiliation it was worth while taking endless 
trouble, and she proceeded to take it with all the 
alertness of her exceedingly nimble wits. Already 
she found encouragement in her undoubted success 
in little things. She had begun to notice, almost at 
once, the liking of her husband’s family for napkins 
in preference to “serviettes,” and she had set her¬ 
self to discover and eradicate the little differences 
of dress, of vocabulary, of manner, that seemed to 
make her unpleasantly conspicuous. The day before 
their visit to Berkshire Harry had crept behind her 
at breakfast and gently, with a kiss, had pushed back 
the little finger that she held with such genteel 
rigidity away from her lifted cup. At the time she 
had blushed, partly from annoyance, partly from 
consciousness of her fault, but from that moment 
had dated her resolve to watch, and learn, and 
imitate. The little finger had been, since then, for 
the most part, tractable. Only at moments of 
sudden discomfort, such as had come to her during 
her first evening at Stonechurch, did it forget its 
new discipline and slip out again to point the degree 
of her social insecurity. And now, day by day, and 
minute by minute, her resolve and her power of 
achievement was strengthened. Mrs. Eendle had 
confided in her, made her feel the influence she might 
have upon her husband, and she determined, then 
and there, to make that influence felt, to be a wife 
of whom he need not be ashamed. Not that she 
ceased in any way to look to him for guidance. He 
was wonderful, surprising; he had given her some- 


174 An Unknown Quantity 

thing which, before his advent, she had never 
dreamed of possessing, still, there might be, after all, 
things she could do, ways in which she could help 
him. She had ‘‘stood up for him,’’ bravely, to his 
sister, and the act had awakened a semi-maternal 
instinct that lifted her by slight, but quite percep¬ 
tible, degrees nearer to his position of superiority. 
Not for long should Eachel patronise her, not with 
impunity should Freddie look at her, as he had done 
across the dinner table, with that glance of subtly 
insulting appraisal which made her feel that he held 
her cheaper than his wife. She would show all these 
people that she could learn their language, that she 
was, for all their doubting, just the wife Harry ought 
to have, capable of standing at his side, no longer a 
privileged stranger, but duly enfranchised. The 
very house contributed to her new feeling of 
strength. At first it had frightened her, kept her at 
arm’s length, but under the warm shadow of Mrs. 
Kendle’s wing, she had grown to feel it friendly. Its 
atmosphere absorbed her, its air of traditional 
breeding and unostentatious comfort influenced her 
almost without her being aware of it doing so. It 
was “up to her” to become part of it all, to take its 
lessons to heart. 

To Evelyn the recognition of the, as yet, small but 
quite distinctly observable changes in his wife came 
simply as an additional item in the great sum of his 
pleasure. He was still too deeply sunk in the passion 
of his love to trouble himself about their causes, or 
rather he assumed that it was his influence, his 
example that alone was working the miracle of so 
fine a transmutation. Upon him too the atmosphere 
of Stonechurch, the warm radiance of his mother’s 


An Unknown Quantity 175 

ready acceptance and S3nnpathy, was having notice¬ 
able effect. He had braced himself for opposition 
and reproaches, had even at first felt slightly disap¬ 
pointed, cheated, at finding no ineradicable hostility 
to Joyce. That feeling had, however, vanished. In 
the circumstances of home he had recognized it as 
foolishly perverse, and it had given place to thank¬ 
fulness. The moments of his early passion had been 
sweet beyond imagining, the stolen meetings, the 
theatres, the quick, snatched kisses, even the agonies 
of suspense. He had loved their strangeness, had 
gloried in the challenge to convention which, in seek¬ 
ing them, he had fancied himself to be flinging. Still, 
he could not deny that they had contained an element 
of the furtive. Here, among the trees and hills of 
his remembered childhood, love had come to a fuller 
fruition. Joyce, in this happy quietness, seemed 
more fully his: their love had gained completeness. 
He laughed joyously to think how inevitable, how 
simple, the result must be. How careful he had been 
in the early weeks of their honeymoon to soften for 
her, by hints and suggestions, the acuteness of the 
change. With what loving insistence he had al¬ 
ready, unnoticed by her, begun to teach and train, to 
uproot from her consciousness the memory of her 
former life, to divert her, gently, from the worn 
pathways of her habits. And now, almost miracu¬ 
lously, he was seeing the first sproutings of the crop. 
His choice was proving so admirably right. How re¬ 
sponsive she was, how fine: on what an exquisite 
surface, innocent of troublesome scribblings, was his 
own so carefully formed writing already visible! 
He would have been miserable with a girl of his own 
class, saturated with prejudices, on fire with social 


176 An Unknown Quantity 

ambitions. She would have hampered his work and 
interfered with his freedom. Joyce, of course, 
didn’t always understand him, but then he wasn’t 
sure that he wanted her to. She was his wife, not 
his collaborator, and the stream of his inspiration 
would flow steadier and more abundantly, for the 
knowledge of her love and admiration. Liell should 
take off that hat of his and admit that the laugh was 
against him! 

A day or two later, as they stood on the old stone 
bridge and watched the lazy flickering of the fish 
beneath them, he asked her how soon she would be 
ready to go back to London. 

‘‘I’ve only just realised how long we’ve been 
away,” he said. “It’s all gone like a flash and been 
so perfect; first our honeymoon and then this. Do 
you know it’s almost six weeks? I could go on for 
ever just being with you here, but I must get back 
to work. There’s the house, too. I’m beginning to 
get homesick for it, Joyce. I want to see it again 
and feel that we are really living in it, to lock the 
door at night with the knowledge that just we two 
are there.” 

He drew her closer to him. The light breeze blew 
the hair about her eyes, and the swaying leaves 
above them dappled her face adorably with shadows. 
Suddenly he bent, with a quick flutter of passion at 
his heart, and kissed her neck. 

“My perfect, perfect wife!” he murmured. 

She smiled up at him. “Oh, Evelyn dear,” she 
sighed, “it will be lovely.” 

For a moment he did not notice her use of the 
name, then, in a flash, he realised the novelty. 


An Unknown Quantity 177 

Laughing, he held her by both shoulders, away from 
him. 

‘‘Hullohe said. “I thought I was always to be 
Harry?’’ 

Self-consciousness flooded her face with scarlet, 
but she caught the infection of his happiness and her 
eyes laughed back to his. 

“I think I like you to be Evelyn,” she said with 
an attempted air of nonchalance. 

“You used to say it was silly,” he reminded her, 
“a girl’s name.” 

“/ was silly then; I think it’s a nice name. Your 
mother always uses it.” 

The incident, unimportant though it was, filled 
him unaccountably with gladness, for he saw in it 
yet another sign of his influence, a flicker of reflected 
light. 

As they walked slowly back to the house he caught 
her once or twice glancing timidly at him, as though 
she wished to say something that she could not or 
would not put into words. At the bottom of the 
tennis lawn she suddenly stood still. 

“Would you mind very much if your mother came 
up with us?” she asked. Then, as she saw the look 
of disappointment dart across his eyes, she added, 
“It’d only be for a very short time.” 

“Do you want her to come?” 

“She’s offered to help me settle in; and—and— 
it’s so kind of her, and I shall feel a little strange, 
you know, and—oh! Evelyn, I should like it so much 
if you don’t mind dreadfully.” The end of her 
sentence came with a rush of words: there was a 
hint of tears in her eyes. 


178 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘My darling, of course I don’t mind: I want you 
to have everything that can possibly make you 
happy; only—well, I’d been so looking forward to 
being just we two. I’d never expected mother to 
come so soon.” 

“It’s awfully nice of her to want to, I think, and 
it’ll be rather lovely showing her the house, won’t 
it?” 

“Of course it will, and she’ll be able to give you all 
sorts of hints! It was selfish of me to grudge you 
that.” 

“It’ll only be for a day or two; a week at the 
most.” 

The note of timid pleading in her voice had 
softened him at once to acquiescence. After all, she 
had no mother of her own and it was natural and 
delightful of her to cling to his. He almost con¬ 
vinced himself, after later consideration, that it was 
he who had made the suggestion. 


THE TENTH CHAPTER 


I 

IITRS. RENDLE, despite her overwhelming ma- 
ternal instincts, was a woman of tact. She had 
never in her life been inside a music-hall, but had she 
been spirited into the auditorium of a suburban 
variety theatre, she would have been not altogether 
surprised at the popular attitude towards mothers- 
in-law. The actual form and tone of the performers^ 
comments she would have found, undoubtedly, gross, 
unpleasant and exaggerated, but with the essential 
justice of their thesis she would not have quarrelled. 
Instinct and memory combined to tell her that mar¬ 
ried couples must face their problems unassisted, 
and that advice given too soon is, as a rule, unwel¬ 
come and often dangerous. The newly married, in 
particular, must, she realised, be left to their own 
devices, and very sensibly she determined that her 
first visit to the house in Church Street should be as 
short as possible. She had, indeed, been chary 
about suggesting it at all, but the readiness of Joyce 
to respond to her advances with a repayment of inti¬ 
macy as complete as her own, had finally overcome 
her scruples by adding force to her own paramount 
desire to see the ‘‘young people’’ settled, to make 
sure of her son’s security and happiness, to give to 
his wife indisputable evidence of her own accep-1 
tance. 

179 

/ 


i8o An Unknown Quantity 

The visit was a complete success. The house, 
there could be no denying it, was charming, and to 
Joyce it was almost as much a novelty as it was to 
their visitor, for since she had last seen it, a fort¬ 
night before her marriage, it had been scoured and 
papered and painted from basement to roof. She 
ran from room to room with little cries of pleasure, 
pulling aside a curtain here, straightening a picture 
there, doubling on her tracks to give her husband 
yet another kiss, pulling her mother-in-law merci¬ 
lessly upstairs and downstairs, until at last the three 
of them fell exhausted into the only three chairs in 
the diminutive dining-room. 

‘‘Oh, Evelyn, it’s wonderful! and isn’t it splendid 
to think it’s ours 1 ’ ’ 

It was, and Mrs. Kendle said it was, and smiled 
and laughed, and noticed everything and criticised 
nothing. She found all the arrangements so con¬ 
venient and the paint so pretty and the house just 
the right size and the two of them quite the most 
delightful part of it all, so delightful that she wept 
tears of motherly joy, quite shamelessly, before 
them. 

She stayed with them for ten days, and during 
all that time her tact never left her. If Joyce asked 
her opinion she gave it readily, but she carefully re¬ 
frained from volunteering counsel of any descrip¬ 
tion. Upon the “girl”—to her new mistress an ob¬ 
ject of undisguised terror—^her mere presence had 
a sobering and disciplinary etfect, and Joyce, secure 
in the possession of so trusty an ally, found it pos¬ 
sible, once or twice, to venture a soft reprimand, a 
piece of daring so extraordinary in her own eyes, 
that she spoiled it invariably by laughing self-con- 


An Unknown Quantity i8l 

sciously before the victim of her timid sternness was 
well out of the room. 

On the morning of her departure Mrs. Rendle 
called Evelyn into her room. Her eyes were tearful, 
but she smiled happily at him. 

“My dear boy,’’ she said, “I can’t tell you how 
happy and pleased I am; I can almost forgive you 
for not allowing me to be at your wedding, and I 
never thought I should be able to forgive that!” 

Evelyn always found his mother’s intimacies em¬ 
barrassing. He was devoted to her, but her senti¬ 
mental outbursts made him reticent. Now, however, 
he forced himself to respond. 

“You are really pleased, mother?” he asked. 

“I’m more than pleased, I’m absolutely satisfied. 
I’m going back with such a warm, happy feeling in 
my heart. I know everything’s all right. You know 
how much I wanted you to get married,” she con¬ 
tinued ; “ I was always just a little bit worried about 
you. You see I didn’t know any of your clever 
friends, and I couldn’t bear to think that there was 
a part of your life to which I was a stranger. Now 
I know that this is your life and I’m not shut out 
any more.” 

“Oh, but mother dear, you never-” Evelyn 

began on a note of protest, but she interrupted him. 

“Yes, my dear, I was: perhaps it was natural, but 
sometimes it made me unhappy. That’s all over 
now.” 

“And Joyce?” 

“I was foolish and selfish at first, it wasn’t what 
I’d intended for you, but I see that I was wrong. I 
think Joyce is a darling. Oh, Evelyn, you must be 
very kind and gentle with her, you’re giving her 



182 An Unknown Quantity 

things she’s never been used to, and I think she’s a 
little bit frightened. Dear, you mustn’t be im¬ 
patient with me. After all, an old mother can some¬ 
times tell you things you don’t know, and marriage 
can be very difficult. ’ ’ 

Evelyn was conscious of a slight feeling of irrita¬ 
tion. Dear mother, what did she really know, what 
did she really see out of that world of sentimental 
romance she loved to live in? How little she under¬ 
stood him! how completely she failed to see the 
glowing, triumphant simplicity of their marriage! 
He walked uncomfortably to the window: then, with 
a vague sense of eifort he turned and smiled at her. 

‘‘It’s splendid to know that you feel like that, 
mother,” he said. “You’ve been so kind to Joyce; 
she’s devoted to you already.” 

There was a short pause, which she broke by mov¬ 
ing across to him and taldng his hand in hers. 

“Nobody could be good enough for my boy,” she 
murmured, and added a moment later: “I think 
you’re very, very lucky”; after which illogical re¬ 
mark she kissed him, wiped her eyes, pulled down her 
veil, and said that if her cab was ready she must go 
if she was not to lose her train. 

As she lumbered away in her wheezing four- 
wheeler—nothing, she had insisted, would ever in¬ 
duce her to go in a taxi—she smiled to herself, lost 
in a world of dreams which was peopled, for the 
most part, by phantom grandchildren. 

Joyce and Evelyn, arm in arm upon the pavement, 
watched her jolt uncomfortably into the Fulham 
Eoad. 


An Unknown Quantity 


183 


II 

Now that his mother visit was ended, Evelyn felt 
that he had come, at last, into his own. As he walked 
slowly, his wife by his side, up the flagged pathway 
to the chequered shade of the latticed porch, a feel¬ 
ing of power and mastery, a sense of possessive love, 
sent the blood racing, with a flicker of heart beats, to 
his head. The emotion was so overpowering that, 
for a moment, he stood still, impotent in the grip of 
his passion. In that flash of time the world around 
him looked new and strange, suspended, as it were, in 
mid-movement, struck to a frightening, significant 
silence. It was as though movement were univer¬ 
sally stilled, as though the ordinary things of life— 
the house, the vivid black and green of the plane 
tree, the drenching excellence of the sunlight, Joyce, 
with her face tilted, laced with shadow, to his own— 
were caught in a sudden web of unreality, or rather 
that in his sharpened consciousness they took on a 
new reality, intoxicating, surprising, mysterious. 
The jumble of his sensations rushed to a focus, beat¬ 
ing on him with a sense of happiness and fulfilment, 
and then, as quickly, they flashed, and spread, and 
sparkled, leaving the world once more as it had al¬ 
ways been, and he was walking with Joyce held 
closely to him, back to his own front door, happy and 
contented, but no longer God. 

As he closed the door behind them he was caught 
again in the swirl of his passion, but this time it had 
the firm reality of physical desire. He was con¬ 
scious no longer of a waiting, listening universe, but 
only of the softness of her body in his arms, of the 



184 An Unknown Quantity 

urgency of breasts crushed to him, of the sweet 
moistness of parted lips on his. Again and again he 
kissed her, drunk with the scent of her hair, and the 
fall of sunlight on her neck. She lay against him 
still and unstruggling, and his senses took fire at her 
weakness. He longed, suddenly, to hurt her. Then 
for the second time that morning the ecstasy passed. 
The fury of his kisses softened and he held her 
mouth to his in gentleness. 

‘‘Just we two,’’ he murmured, “just we two.” 

She smiled up at him. The hunger of his desire 
had frightened her, but she found comfort now in 
the softness of his voice. She drew his face to hers 
and kissed him, trying to catch something of the 
fury of his caress. A faint sense of pride came to 
her that she could rouse him to such a tempest of 
love, a feeling that, for all his strength, he was 
utterly her own. She realised her power, though she 
did not understand it. He was trembling as he re¬ 
leased her, and again she felt vaguely frightened, 
but when she spoke her words were light. 

“Oh, Evelyn,” she said, “look at my hair, it’s all 
anyhow!” 

* * * 

It was not until three days later, however, that 
Evelyn was able to give the final flourish to his 
marriage, to frame it, as he might have said, to 
“hang” it and draw back for contemplation of its 
admirably varnished and gilded completeness. Dur¬ 
ing the morning a parcel was delivered to him from 
his publisher, and at lunch, with due ceremony, he 
put into Joyce’s hands a volume with her name upon 
the dedication page. 

“It’s yours as much as mine, my dear,” he said. 


An Unknown Quantity 185 

‘‘You came into my life while it was in the making, 
and the w^onder of you is all about it. It is our first 
child, Joyce.’’ 

She blushed at what seemed to her the indelicacy 
of the allusion, but the sight of the two simple words, 
“To Joyce,” set boldly on the paper, gave her a 
strange thrill of pleasure. 

That afternoon she set herself seriously to the 
reading of “LIGHTED WINDOWS,” and though 
she understood but little of it and enjoyed still less, 
she drew comfort from the sign and seal of her 
possession set there by her husband for all to see. 

His work was, for her, withdrawn so utterly from 
the individual that she had never, hitherto, given it a 
thought beyond regarding it vaguely as setting him 
socially above the men of her former experience. 
That she could, or need, enter into it with under¬ 
standing had never occurred to her. When he had 
spoken first of marriage the thought of it had, of 
course, loomed for a moment with rather frighten¬ 
ing bulk, reinforcing her earliest feeling that the 
suggestion was altogether impossible, but his elo¬ 
quence had overborne her then, and in the weeks fol¬ 
lowing the marriage the human relationship had 
absorbed the whole of her to the exclusion of her 
fears. Now, for a few short moments, they returned. 
As she read on puzzled and uncomprehending, the 
figure of her husband grew dim and strange, the 
gulf between them yawned once again, real and ap¬ 
parently unbridgeable. Yet, somehow, the sense of 
discomfort did not, once she had met the first shock 
of it, oppress her for long. Her imagination was not 
strong enough to give the vision clarity of outline, 
her mind was too untrained to find in the situation a 


i86 An Unknown Quantity 

real problem demanding solution, to picture the new 
elements of their relationship as in any way 
threatening. After the first quick feeling of sur¬ 
prise, the mood softened and vanished. After all, 
it didn’t really matter. She had always known that 
he was ‘‘clever,” that there were parts of him she 
didn’t understand, but she couldn’t believe that they 
would ever affect her personally. She knew enough 
now to be certain of his love and of her power to 
rouse and keep it. He had married her with his 
eyes open, so why should she worry? His work was 
something apart. It gave him, and consequently her 
as well, a certain position; it would make him 
“famous,” and that would be ever so nice: he 
couldn’t really want or expect her to understand it. 
Of course, she must be capable of taking her place 
as the wife of a successful man, that must be what he 
had meant, that and nothing more, when he had 
spoken of her helping him. The prospect humbled 
even while it braced her to effort. Well, she would 
try her best to do him credit; it wouldn’t really be so 
very difficult if she set her mind to it. The deter¬ 
mination that had been born in her at Stonechurch 
came back to her now with strength redoubled. She 
would show that sister of his and her husband that 
she was not the frightened nobody they took her for. 
Desire for personal triumph surged into her heart, 
but with it were mingled elements less wholly selfish. 
In her complex feeling for Evelyn gratitude and 
admiration had parts by no means small. He must 
never regret that he had taken her. She must show 
him, she must show them all, especially his mother 
who now so wholeheartedly believed in her, that so 


An Unknown Quantity 187 

much confidence was not undeserved, that his choice 
had been, in every way, a good one. 

And so, though she read the book loyally from 
cover to cover, and rejoiced proudly in the dedica¬ 
tion, she did not allow herself to be perturbed unduly 
by her failure to understand a part of her husband 
with which she expected to be so little brought in 
contact. She told him that she loved it, and almost 
believed, while she spoke, in the sincerity of her 
praise, believed in it utterly, indeed for the moment, 
when she saw how his eyes lit up and felt him take 
her to his arms again and kiss her into silence. 

Belief for Evelyn was not difficult. The eyes that 
had, without straining, seen pathos in banality and 
passion in acquiescence, could discern easily enough 
the still surface of deep waters that needed but a 
pebble, skilfully thrown, to break into ripples. That 
there were, in Joyce, depths hitherto unstirred, 
capabilities unawakened, formed an essential part 
of the ‘^idea’’ that, unexpressed even to himself, had 
lurked, all along, at the back of his mind. When, 
therefore, she spoke of her liking for his work he 
felt pleasure rather than surprise. It was as though 
he stood upon the bank and listened to the music of 
the first “plop’’ with arm raised for a second dis¬ 
charge. “LIGHTED WINDOWS” was, he told 
himself, a test to which she had admirably re¬ 
sponded. He was too young in marriage to probe 
for causes behind effects, and nothing less than some 
definite attitude of hostility or criticism would have 
lessened appreciably, at this stage, his sense of 
triumphant contentment. 

After his mother’s departure he felt, more than 


i88 An Unknown Quantity 

ever in his relationship with Joyce, a sense of 
mastery and at the same time of responsibility. 
Their happiness was already, he felt, assured, won¬ 
derfully certain, but it must be, in its completeness, 
a jewel of his cutting, his setting. She believed in 
him so utterly, she was, in many ways, so humble, 
that the thought of her life in his hands to fashion 
as he might will, brought tears of love and tender¬ 
ness to his eyes. Sometimes as he sat and watched 
her with the light upon the gracious curve of her 
neck, the sense of her there in his room, his chair, 
throned and aureoled in his love, swept through him 
with the sweetness of an almost intolerable delight, 
and he would go over to her and kneel with his head 
against her breast while the silence throbbed with 
the passion, his passion, that swirled them so close 
together in the rhythm of its tide. At such moments 
he was conscious, as he never was at other times, of 
a paternal feeling towards her. He had in store for 
her such a splendid future of truth and beauty, 
such gifts to lay at her feet, and yet the wonder and 
fragility of her called out to him, so pathetically, for 
protection. Without him she would be utterly alone, 
to him she looked for everything, and it was his duty, 
a duty of love and thankfulness, to see that the 
pattern of her life should be woven without flaw. 
She was his completely, and with the setting of her 
name in the forefront of his book he felt that he had 
sealed graciously the bond of his possession. By 
that act of symbolism he had identified her with all 
that was fundamental in his life, had unlocked, as 
with a golden key, the gate through which they were 
to walk into the future. How right he had been to 
trust to his instincts, to take for the journey a com- 


An Unknown Quantity 189 

panion virgin of experience, fresh and glowing from 
the very heart of life, untouched, unformed, un¬ 
spoiled ! 

Ill 

Nothing now remained for Evel^m in the logical 
pursuit of his, marital stratagems but to introduce 
his wife formally, or rather with that careful infor¬ 
mality that they found so precious, to his friends. 

Stonechurch, he told himself, had been a necessary 
preliminary to her new life. He could not well have 
avoided an early visit to his parents, but though he 
was devoted to his mother and sufficiently in awe of 
his father to be anxious for his blessing, he could not 
but admit that, in his eyes, the respectable solitudes 
of Berkshire were destined to be for Joyce a back¬ 
ground only to the richer life of London. That was 
all behind them now, but Chelsea actually and meta¬ 
phorically stretched at their feet. He was un¬ 
affectedly pleased at the ease with which she had 
‘‘fitted” into the frame of his family, but the circle 
to which she had, so far, been shown, was to play, 
both in his imagination and his intention, but a small 
part in their joint lives as compared with the army 
of his friends to wffiom she was still, comparatively, 
a stranger. A stranger utterly she was not, for true 
to his word he had insisted on LielPs presence at the 
wedding and had there presented him to his terrified 
and speechless bride. From that briefest of en¬ 
counters she had taken away no distinct impression 
beyond a consciousness of added shyness, and the 
intimacy of the honeymoon, followed so quickly by 
all the novelty of Stonechurch, had prevented her 


190 An Unknown Quantity 

reflecting upon this, the solitary example of her hus¬ 
band’s male friends, so far presented to her. 
Vaguely she had felt him to be laughing at her, and 
the suspicion had disturbed and displeased her. As 
a matter of fact Liell had gone to the ceremony de¬ 
termined to put her at her ease, but the sight of 
Evelyn, radiant, self-possessed, and visibly trium¬ 
phant, had woken the sardonic spirit which, in him, 
never soundly slept. 

“This is Joyce,” his friend had said, and with a 
slightly exaggerated bow he had replied, “No, my 
dear Evelyn, please, Andromeda; Andromeda of the 
new mythology!” And then, turning to Joyce, he 
had added, “In the old legend it is Perseus who re¬ 
leases the maiden from captivity, but here obviously 
the positions are reversed.” 

The banalities of congratulation had followed and 
he remained in her memory, in so far as he can be 
said to have had a place there at all, as a baffling, 
frightening man with bright eyes and an untidy 
beard, who had brought home to her suddenly, far 
more violently than her husband, even by his most 
unintelligible speeches, had ever done, the reckless¬ 
ness and foolishness of her conduct. For this she 
felt that she owed him a grudge, but being by nature 
forgiving and forgetful, she had determined, under 
pressure of Evelyn’s repeated assurances, that he 
was really “the nicest fellow in the world,” to make 
the best of him, to consider him, as far as was pos¬ 
sible, without prejudice. Still, the impression did, 
in a degree, remain, and to her personal memory of 
him, dimmed already by later, more important ex¬ 
periences, was added a subtler and less conscious 
suspicion, an intuition that he was an influence of 


An Unknown Quantity 191 

importance in Evelyn’s life, an influence in wliich, 
from reasons of temperament and understanding, 
she conld not share. 

These fragmentary and disquieting impressions of 
Beverley had, at the time, been further neutralised 
by the excitement of a pleasanter occurrence. Agatha 
Biscoe, uninvited but certain of a welcome, had ap¬ 
peared unexpectedly in the almost empty church. 
She had told Evelyn that in her role of ‘‘London 
mother” she could not bring herself to keep away 
from his wedding, and at once Joyce had taken ref¬ 
uge in the kindliness that beamed unmistakably from 
her good-natured face. An immediate understand¬ 
ing had sprung up between them, and in the presence 
of the older woman Joyce had lost much of the shy¬ 
ness that, with Beverley, had kept her speechless and 
fingering with moist hands the hopelessly inappro¬ 
priate bouquet that Hilda had insisted on presenting 
to her. Hilda herself, overcome with timidity at 
sight of the bridegroom, had retired, after a hasty 
kiss and a few whispered words of encouragement, 
to the shelter of the gallery, where, in the company 
of George Dendy, gloomily happy in the affectation 
of a mildly Byronic despair, she had wept her en- 
jo3unent of the ceremony. Joyce, therefore, would 
have been left entirely unsupported had not Agatha, 
so admirably competent, come to her rescue. She 
had indeed been wonderful, managing Evelyn, con¬ 
trolling Beverley, quieting the almost panic nervous¬ 
ness of the very distant, visibly perspiring, cousin, 
who, in lieu of a father, had been induced to give the 
bride away. Of her Joyce had nothing but happy 
memories, and though the later and more vivid pic¬ 
ture of Mrs. Eendle had come to tone down for her 


192 An Unknown Quantity 

poor Agatha’s colours, she could not altogether for¬ 
get the kindness that had helped so much to make 
that day of terrors tolerable. 

Now at last, so Evelyn felt, the time had come for 
introduction to a wider circle. Sooner or later Joyce 
must be made free of all his friends, brought finally 
into that life which, before his marriage, had meant 
so much to him, into which he had all along intended 
they should slip easily and happily with all the airs 
of blissfully married Bohemianism. As in the days 
of his courtship, a sudden desire for comradeship and 
confidence had succeeded to his mood of secrecy, so 
now he felt the need of old friends to share their hap¬ 
piness, the desire to take up again the threads of 
older intimacies. He was feverishly anxious to show 
his wife to Jimmy, to Stephen, to ‘‘Bunny,” to throw 
open to her the door to all that glittering company 
of genius and good fellowship in which alone, he felt, 
permanent contentment could be found. That she 
might fail to share his pleasure he never dreamed. 
She was so adaptable, so quick, so ready to appreci¬ 
ate new values. Hadn’t she, at Stonechurch, taken 
to the water without, perceptibly, a shudder ? Here, 
in Chelsea, there was nothing so terrifying in store, 
nothing but easiness, friendliness, enthusiasm for 
new faces and new ideas. It was only necessary to 
choose the time and the place, and that, as circum¬ 
stances turned out, was not difficult. It had been, 
for some time past, the habit of Evelyn’s friends to 
congregate informally once a month for an evening’s 
“binge.” Originally it was intended to make the 
house of each in turn the scene of hospitality, but in 
summer the commodiousness of the studio in Swan 
Walk, free from the threat of winter rains, proved so 


An Unknown Quantity 193 

undeniably suitable for these joyous gatherings that 
the attempts of other hosts and hostesses to compete 
had come, quite definitely, to grief, and Jimmy’s 
Monday evenings remained in undisputed possession 
of the field. The whole wide, and ever widening, 
circle of his acquaintance was recruited for guests, 
and the certainty of his beaming welcome drew, as 
with a magnet, in addition to his inner ring of inti¬ 
mates, all those kindred spirits to whom Beverley 
was accustomed to refer as “casuals.” 

The problem of refreshing so large a number of 
thirsty people had, at one time, seemed impossible of 
solution, and Jimmy’s kindly heart suffered much, 
not at the thought of providing for so many, for that 
he realised was utterly beyond his power, but at the 
prospect of seeing so excellent a company go dry 
and, incidentally, hungry, away. Luckily for his 
peace of mind the difficulty did not long remain un¬ 
surmounted, for it soon became an unwritten custom 
for guests to come with offerings in their hands and 
pockets, and in due, latterly even undue, proportion 
to the numbers of the assembly, a variegated army 
of bottles took station upon his model’s dais. 

The second Monday after Mrs. Bendle’s departure 
happened to be the evening of Jimmy’s September 
festival, and Evelyn decided that this, beyond doubt, 
was the occasion for which he had been waiting. 
Apart from his urgent wish to introduce Joyce to 
his friends, he was vividly conscious of a desire to 
see them again in the old, easy way. Since his en¬ 
gagement he had seen, comparatively, so little of 
them, and he hungered now for the familiar gather¬ 
ings. 

As he set out with Joyce upon his arm, and bottles 


194 An Unknown Quantity 

bulging his coat, he felt like a child going to a party. 
With the natural desire to see friendly faces and 
hear familiar talk, was mingled too, though he would 
have admitted it only under compulsion, a sense as 
of a king, long invisible, about to appear to loyal 
subjects. He had been, for so many months, clearly 
a leading spirit in the conclaves of his intimates, that 
the feeling was not so aggressively conceited as, thus 
baldly revealed, it might, at first sight, appear to be. 
How glad they would be to see him again! For a 
moment he found himself wondering how on earth 
they had got on without him. . . . He walked sing¬ 
ing from sheer lightness of heart, and the early 
autumn night seemed to bless his happiness. The 
Chelsea streets were still and heavy-scented with the 
stored odours of the London summer, and through 
the branches that drooped tired leaves above the 
pavements the street lamps shone with a blown and 
friendly magic. Here and there they passed, in 
shadowed doorways, stray lovers murmuring, and 
at the sound of their voices he drew Joyce closer to 
him with a little spasm of increased desire. She 
nestled to him, her face upturned to his, moved by 
the September dusk, to an unusual passion of re¬ 
sponse. She clung to him as though seeking protec¬ 
tion, for she was nervous, shy of the ordeal before 
her, but ready to find the evening wonderful. Evelyn 
had spoken so often of these friends, of their ready 
acceptance of her. It would be all easy and delight¬ 
ful, free from all stiffness and embarrassment. Still, 
the prospect held uncertainties. Would they be all 
as nice, she wondered, as Agatha, or would they be 
frightening like that ‘‘weird’’ Mr. Beverley? At any 


An Unknown Quantity 195 

rate, Evelyn would be there; she could keep close to 
him, safe in the consciousness of his protection. 

As they turned on to the Embankment he gazed, 
full of a sentimental memory, across the light- 
pierced river to the huddled masses of Battersea. 
They stood still, and suddenly he kissed her. 

“Do you remember?’’ he whispered. 

For a moment she couldn’t think what he meant, 
but his face turned towards the bridge gave her the 
clue to his thoughts. 

“Of course!” she said, and returned his kiss. 

They drew near to the studio and his mood of sen¬ 
timent took wings. A swelling noise of voices and 
laughter came from the open windows, and through 
the skylight a yellow shaft shot into the warm, heavy 
darkness. A sudden access of fear seized and shook 
her. For a second she would have given everything 
to go no farther, but he quickened his pace and the 
sense of panic left her. 

“We’re late,” he said; and, taldng his arm from 
hers, ran shouting up the street. Beneath the win¬ 
dow he stopped, hoisted himself up by his arms to 
the sill, and put his head through the open casement. 

“Hullo!” he shouted, “come and open the door, 
Jimmy!” He clambered down again and waited, 
laughing, for Joyce. 

From the room came a great answering shout, and 
as she joined him the door was flung open and they 
stood, blinking for a moment, in the sudden light. 


THE ELEVENTH CHAPTEE 


I 

I ^EOM Joyce’s point of view things went wrong 
from the moment that they stepped into the 
studio. She would have found it hard to explain 
what, exactly, she expected, but that she did expect 
something, something deliciously out of the ordinary, 
and that what she found was utterly different from 
anything she could ever, with her limited experience, 
have imagined, was beyond doubt. Naturally she 
had tried to form some idea of what these friends of 
Evelyn’s would be like, and as naturally her imagina¬ 
tion had moved along the road most familiar to her. 
As a result her mental forecast of this new, gay, un¬ 
conventional life was dictated in its main outlines by 
memories of American ‘‘film” comedies in which 
artists of incredible genius were shown at work— 
usually in tail-coats and stocks, though the costume 
was varied by occasional excursions into full evening 
dress—surrounded, in gorgeous rooms of gar¬ 
gantuan proportions, by numerous bronzes and occa¬ 
sional busts of Beethoven. The picture thus formed 
in her mind was qualified by dim recollections of a 
scene in a recent “revue,” where a group of young 
men in sky-blue smocks and velvet tam-o’-shanters 
had hoisted young women on to restaurant tables to 
the lilt of a song about “Nights in Bohe-mYa.” 

196 


An Unknown Quantity 197 

From these elements she had evolved no very vivid 
or convincing composition, but whatever the details 
of the scene as anticipated in her imagination, it did 
certainly tend to centre round her as its main fea¬ 
ture. She didn’t, she felt, want publicity, but how 
was she to avoid it ? She was to be introduced to all 
these friends of Evelyn’s and naturally they would 
be curious, affable, perhaps even a little bit enthusi¬ 
astic. There might be something in the nature of a 
celebration (again the vision of smocked figures rais¬ 
ing glasses rose before her eyes), at the very least 
there would be congratulations, so that the evening 
threatened to be trying even if it was to be rather 
exciting. 

When, therefore, Jimmy opened the door, and they 
stumbled into the dazzle of the studio, she was keyed 
up to a state of nervous tension that made her more 
responsive than she usually was to impressions. As 
she stood there, on the threshold, trying to accustom 
her eyes to the glare and her ears to the confusion of 
sounds that filled the room, it seemed to her that she 
had been flung, without warning, into a nightmare. 
At first she could see nothing clearly through the fog 
of blue smoke that eddied towards her in the draught 
from the open door, stinging her eyes and making 
her cough. By degrees, however, she distinguished 
misty figures standing, sitting, sprawling. They 
seemed to be everywhere, on chairs, sofas, against 
the walls, all over the floor, a jostling medley of 
faces, backs, arms and legs. Everyone, too, seemed 
to be talking, though she could catch no words, noth¬ 
ing but a discord of voices, with, now and again, the 
sharp accent of a laugh, the penetrating clink of 
glass. 


198 An Unknown Quantity 

She had been standing a full minute unnoticed in 
the doorway before Evelyn turned to Jimmy and 
took his arm. 

‘ ‘ This is Jimmy, ’ ^ he said. ‘ ‘ Jimmy—Joyce. ^ ’ 

She was aware then of a gaunt, awkward figure 
that lurched past her husband, of a high-pitched 
voice and a broad smile. 

‘‘I say,’’ said the voice, ‘‘it jolly of you to come; 
let me shove your things in the corner.” 

A large hand seized her wrap, whisking it off her 
shoulders, and the voice continued: “You’ll have 
something to drink, won’t youf” 

Before she could reply Evelyn had taken her arm 
and drawn her farther into the room. As they 
worked their way through the crowd of bodies that 
rolled aside on the floor before the pressure of their 
feet, more and more eyes were turned towards them, 
more and more voices acclaimed Evelyn’s hitherto 
unnoticed arrival. 

Jack Biscoe’s stentorian shout dominated, for a 
moment, the general medley of sound. 

“Hullo!” he called, “here’s Evelyn at last.” 

“And Mrs. Evelyn,” contributed “Bunny,” who 
was squatting on the floor at his feet. “How d’you 
do, Mrs. Evelyn,” she added loudly, so that heads 
and eyes were turned for the first time definitely to 
Joyce. 

Evelyn’s face was flushed, his eyes sparkled. 

“Hullo everybody!” he shouted back. “This is 
Joyce. Joyce,” looking towards her, “this is every¬ 
body—now that’s done the introducing business and 
we can be happy!” 

He took a step forward and was lost, so it seemed 
to her, immediately; engulfed in a stream of talking, 


An Unknown Quantity 199 

gesticulating figures. She felt suddenly frightened 
and horribly alone. She could just see the top of 
her husband’s head, could hear his voice confusedly. 
As she looked he turned and sought her eyes, smil¬ 
ing, happy, encouraging, but it was as though his 
face watched her out of a dream. A swirl of bodies 
came between them, and when next she saw him he 
was absorbed in conversation, talking to a little knot 
of men and women, his back half turned to her. She 
fancied that he had forgotten her and, for a moment, 
tears burned her eyelids. Then, in a sudden reaction 
of mingled resentment and timidity she looked round 
and saw behind her a sofa. A woman with a long 
pale face framed by lank hair drawn tightly down, 
who was lolling upon it moved along invitingly and 
she sat down. The comforting support of springs 
and cushions encouraged her, but she was still far 
too nervous to attempt conversation with her neigh¬ 
bour, and remained, completely miserable, in con¬ 
spicuous isolation. It was not simply shyness that 
kept her silent and hostile, not simply a natural 
timidity in this roomful of strangers, but rather that 
the noise, and gaiety, and promiscuity that sur¬ 
rounded her called forth, almost against her will, 
prejudices and condemnations typical of her tradi¬ 
tions and her upbringing; prejudices withdrawn, 
since her marriage, almost from memory, but 
startled suddenly this evening into a frightened pro¬ 
test. In the old days she had always been “one for 
keeping herself to herself,” and in the code of strict 
etiquette that controlled the pleasures and compan¬ 
ionships of her circle she had found a law utterly 
satisfactory and, till now, never infringed. In this 
dreadful, smoky room there was no formality, no 


200 An Unknown Quantity 

“decency,’’ no “niceness.” The women in particu¬ 
lar seemed to her unpleasantly shameless. Her own 
code in matters of sex had always been, according 
to the rules of conduct current among her friends, of 
the strictest. Theatres with “gentlemen friends” 
had been, of course, permissible, but the game had 
very definite rules of its own, and nothing would 
have induced her to transgress or suspend one of 
them. Had Evelyn in a moment of perversity 
sought for a means of shocking her profoundly, he 
could not have found anything better for his pur¬ 
pose than this party to which, with every intention 
of love and triumph, he had so innocently brought 
her. The antagonism of his parents, the hostility of 
Stonechurch, these things she could understand and 
strive to overcome, but this new world of Chelsea 
was, to her, utterly incomprehensible, inconceivably 
undesirable. 

She had, by now, grown accustomed to the density 
of the atmosphere, and looked round her with an in¬ 
stinctive and increasing disapproval. The men she 
didn’t mind so much, although they did look dirty; 
it was the women she detested. They seemed to her 
indistinguishable, a grey host of figures with fringed, 
clubbed hair, sallow skins and nondescript clothes. 
More than anything else she found peculiarly dis¬ 
tasteful the atmosphere of staleness that hung about 
them, a crumpled boldness. She noticed that two of 
them went over to Evelyn, saw him turn with a smile 
and a look of pleasure to the greeting she could not 
hear, saw him bend and kiss one of them carelessly, 
happily, and step back laughing and talking. A flame 
of anger swept through her, burning her cheeks. 
How dare he kiss anyone but her! and publicly too, 


An Unknown Quantity 201 

as though it were the most natural thing in the 
world! Every one in this horrible place seemed to 
kiss like that, casually, already she had noticed that, 
but to see her husband, under her very eyes I—for a 
moment she hated him for bringing her, for shaming 
her. 

A voice broke into her thoughts. Jimmy stood be¬ 
fore her perspiring and laughing, holding a glass 
towards her. 

say, I’m so sorry to have been such a long time, 
but I had to make some more cup; do have this. ’ ’ 

She took mechanically the drink he offered her. In 
a swift revulsion of feeling she smiled; Jimmy took 
on for her a sudden significance; he had broken into 
her loneliness; she decided that she rather liked 
him. 

‘‘Thanks ever so much,” she said, and tears, this 
time of self-pity, filled her eyes, but they were un¬ 
noticed, apparently, by her host, for he rushed away 
again, intent on the business of hospitality. She 
sipped at the glass he had left with her: the drink 
was lukewarm, sweet and pungent. 


II 

Jimmy was standing on a chair, towering into the 
smoky air. The confused sounds of the room 
dripped and gurgled into silence. 

“Stephen’s got a new poem with him and he’s 
going to recite it to us.” 

A murmur of applause rippled round the room, 
broken by a muttered protest from a crouched figure 
by the unlighted stove. “Oh God! I wish Jimmy 


202 


An Unknown Quantity 

wouldn’t always play the showman.” Then came 
silence once again, dutiful and expectant. As by a 
miracle everybody found a seat. Across the crowded 
floor of heads Joyce, from her sofa, could see a long, 
tired, young man rise suddenly to his feet, pale- 
faced, with rough hair uncontrolled. He fumbled 
for a moment with a piece of paper, glanced at it, 
and then crumpled it into his pocket. Into the utter 
quietness of the room his voice fell with a low, unreal 
sound of chanting. 

‘‘Soul Vision,” it said, and paused. Then- 

^‘Sin myriad-pillared crowds upon 
My soul. 

Trees bend peering 

All eyes, their lids heavy with lust. 

The leaves hang pendulous like the breasts of hungry negresses 
Swinging gently, 

Rhythmically. 

The great disharmony of life screeches 
Like the calling of a million parakeets. 

Let us sing the song, My Soul, 

We are one note of the Discord: 

We will accept. 

The leaves, like the breasts of dead negresses 

Swing 

Desirous.” 

For at least a quarter of a minute the poet held his 
pose. He had an air of controlling the silence in the 
same way as a driver, hand on lever, holds his engine 
leashed. Then, in a flash, with no premonitory warn¬ 
ing, he dropped completely, comically, into the indisr 
tinguishable mass of his audience. His pulpit was 
empty: a swelling murmur drifted back into the 
room. 

Joyce’s neighbour upon the sofa sighed deeply and 
appreciatively. 



An Unknown Quantity 203 

‘‘What restraint!’^ she whispered, “and yet, how 
dreadful a clarity of outline. ’ ’ 

Joyce said nothing; she was not even sure that the 
words had been addressed to her. The voice contin¬ 
ued. 

“ ‘The leaves like the breasts of hungry ne- 

gresses-donT you find that quite wonderfully 

merciless?’’ 

The direct appeal startled Joyce to a reply: before 
she quite realised that she was answering the words 
had spoken themselves. 

“I thought it was horrid!—who is that man?” 

‘ ‘ That man ? Who do you mean ? ’ ’ 

“Why, the man who said all that.” 

“The poet? Why, don’t you know?” 

“No.” 

“Eeally?”—the shocked surprise of the intona¬ 
tion would have been comic if only Joyce had been 
in the mood for humour—“why, Stephen Langley, 
of course.” 

There was another short pause, but the mere fact 
of an unresponsive listener could not silence the flow 
of slightly patronising information. 

“Langley has a very great influence, he is so fear¬ 
less, so direct. I sometimes think that Eendle’s 
later work owes much to him.” 

The surname at first conveyed nothing to Joyce, 
then, in a flash, the connection came to her. 

“Oh, but he’s my husband!” she burst out, as 
though before that indubitable fact the insinuation 
must fall and wither. 

The voice quickened with real interest. 

“How wonderful for you, what a pleasure, but 
what a responsibility!” The note of languorous 



204 An Unknown Quantity 

affectation crept back. ‘^How terribly, how splen¬ 
didly, he must have suffered! Whenever I read 
‘DISTORTIONS’ I think of a soul in torment. My 
dear, I suppose he is very happy now? ah! but what 
a responsibility; happiness is so dangerous for the 
artist!” 

Joyce sat tongue-tied. The words meant abso¬ 
lutely nothing to her, and for a moment the idea 
came to her that the speaker was mad, but before 
she could pursue the thought further Langley him¬ 
self drew near and her neighbour’s attention was 
transferred, swiftly, to him. 

“Stej)hen—how marvellous!” she said. 

The poet smiled. 

“You like it, Doris?” he asked. 

“It’s wonderful: write me a play, Stephen, a play 
with lines like that: I feel that I could speak your 
words.” 

With a sigh of emotion Miss Carter regained the 
level of her normal silence. The fact that Joyce was 
a stranger had tempted her to an unusual flood of 
speech, but the impulse had exhausted itself and she 
relapsed now into a dumb intensity. Langley turned 
away, but a hand was laid suddenly on his shoulder 
and Evelyn, vociferous, flushed, and happy as a 
child, pulled him back towards the sofa. 

“My dear Stephen, just the very man I wanted, 
you haven’t met Joyce: Joyce, darling, this is 
Stephen—I say, you’ve got nothing to drink! Give 
me your glass, dear. I’ll go and rout round Jimmy’s 
bar.” 

She surrendered the empty glass to him without a 
word. Never before had she seen him so gay, so 
vivid: the consciousness of his pleasure filled her 


An Unknown Quantity 205 

heart, unaccountably, with anger. In self-defence 
she smiled at Langley and held out her hand. He 
took and kissed it with an air. She blushed furiously 
and withdrew it quickly. An embarrassed silence 
dropped between them which Stephen, startled out 
of his self-assurance, broke by awkwardly stam¬ 
mering : 

‘‘I’m very glad to meet you, Mrs. Eendle. Your 
husband is a very old friend of mine.” 

She could not break through the terrible barrier 
of her silence. The simplest words refused to come 
to her. It was he again who spoke. 

“We’ve known each other a very long time.” 

Another pause. 

“Do you know many people here?” 

She managed to murmur, “I don’t know any¬ 
body. ’ ’ 

“Oh, then I must introduce you; there’s 
‘Bunny,’ you’ll like her. I’ll bring her across.” 

Breathing a prayer of thankfulness he took forth¬ 
with the miraculously offered road of escape, and 
picked his way carefully between recumbent bodies, 
towards the distant corner in which the redoubtable 
Miss Cobbold, astride upon a painting-chair, was 
surveying the assembled company with a moody and 
aggressive stare. 

He got no farther than the middle of the room: 
this time it was David who waylaid him. The pre¬ 
posterous little man pranced up, gesticulating, 
grimacing. 

“Ah, mon vieux, at last I get you! What words, 
what passion! I make you of that poem a ballet! 
Quelle danse!—isn’t it? I see them so, your leaves; 


2o6 An Unknown Quantity 

seins de negresses epouvantables, they swing, like 
so, how do you call it Stephen—dangling!’^ 

A roar of laughter greeted the too audible mis¬ 
quotation. David’s tones were so highly pitched 
that they dominated the room, and everybody was 
listening. 

‘‘Pendulous, Louis, pendulous,” said a voice. 
“Ah yes, pen-du-lous, pendus, c’est Qa! What a 
picture for your theatre, see, I make it like this.” 

He snatched a piece of charcoal from the painting- 
table and began to slash great lines and curves upon 
the plastered wall. 

“Just like that!” he continued, “with all the 
colour of bad dreams, to send the shudder in the 
spine, le frisson, tu comprends? And then the 
music, my music! the figures come, the dancers—so, 
stiff, small, ah, mais petits, petits, petits, comme 
des poupees!” 

He crouched and postured, with weird, jerky 
movements, his limbs loose, swinging as though they 
were independent of his body, the whole man turned 
suddenly to the semblance of a marionette. So 
marvellous was the transformation that one looked, 
involuntarily, to the ceiling for the strings that must 
surely move him this way and that. All at once he 
straightened himself again. 

“Ah,” he cried, “faut de musique”; and he 
plunged behind a pile of canvases near by, emerging 
a second later with his beloved balalaika. “C’est 
mieux comme Qa!” 

The dance began again, this time to an accom¬ 
paniment of strange, softened discords that played 
round and over the central beaten rhythm like 
shadows on running water. Except for the thrum- 


An Unknown Quantity 207 

ming of the instrument and the shuffling of the dan¬ 
cer’s feet upon the floor there was complete silence, 
so dominating was the personality of the writhing, 
Jewish figure, so concentrated the attention of his 
audience. In the fervour of his improvisation David 
seemed utterly forgetful of the company. His sen¬ 
sitive face was restless with flickering emotions: he 
was absorbed, for the time being, in the creation 
of his dream, contemptuous of all else. 

The music ceased, the dance stopped as sharply 
as it had begun, and the performer turned to 
Langley. 

‘‘Like that,” he cried, “like that,” and then, as 
the applause broke out, he shrugged his shoulders 
impatiently, his hands pressed to his ears. 

“Les betes!” he muttered, “quelle bruit, one 
cannot hear for it!” and he drew the poet away 
to a farther corner, gesticulating with his free hand, 
talking still in his high reed-like voice. 

Throughout this performance Joyce had sat more 
than ever lonely. Doris Carter, eager to watch the 
dance, had got up and crowded forward for a closer 
view, so that the sofa was left abandoned in the 
shadow. The music came to Joyce still further 
muted by the intervening bodies, bringing with it 
no excitement but only a poignant sobbing that 
forced the tears once more into her eyes, tears of 
solitude, anger, disappointment. Nobody wanted 
her, there was no place here for her: she felt utterly 
forgotten, utterly miserable. Evelyn she could just 
see at the farther side of the room intent upon the 
scene, beating time gently to the music, whispering 
a word now and again to a woman at his shoulder. 
How could he think she would like these people with 


2o8 An Unknown Quantity 

their horrible freedoms, and their sordid, smoky 
room, their talk of things she couldn’t understand, 
that she didn’t want to understand! 

In the confusion of noise that followed the dance 
he came over to her, enthusiastic, apologetic. 

‘‘I simply couldn’t get through to you, darling,” 
he began, “Louis started just as I was coming—oh 
damn! if I haven’t forgotten that drink, after all! 
I say, how tired you look, aren’t you enjoying your¬ 
self!” 

“When are we going home!” she asked, and her 
voice was hard and hostile. 

“Oh, my dear, we can’t go now; why, the even¬ 
ing’s only just beginning, you haven’t met anybody 
yet; there’s a heap of people I must introduce you 
to, they’d never forgive me if I didn’t. Look, there’s 
Agatha beckoning to us; come, you know her and 
you’ve been in this beastly old corner long enough.” 

He pulled her to her feet and she followed him 
listlessly, not caring what she did nor whither she 
went. Stumbling and pushing they got slowly across 
the room to where, in the deep window-seat, Agatha 
Biscoe sat smiling at them. She sat down by the 
older woman with a sigh. 

“Why, my dear, how pretty you look.” Agatha 
drew her out of the corner and piled a cushion at 
her back. “But I can see you’re tired, I don’t 
believe that wretched husband of yours is looking 
after you one little bit. You are tired now, aren’t 
you!’ ’ 

“I suppose I am, a little.” 

“It’s this dreadful atmosphere; come closer to 
me, there’s a lovely draught from the window here.” 


An Unknown Quantity 209 

Joyce found herself suddenly clinging to the large, 
condfortable body at her side. 

‘‘I’m not really tired,” she sobbed, “I’m mis¬ 
erable.” Agatha was, quite unselfconsciously, in 
her “element.” 

“My dear, you’re positively worn out, I can see 
that, and then the strangeness and the heat, no won¬ 
der you’re unstrung.” 

The unexpected discovery of sympathy and kind¬ 
ness had been too much for Joyce, but the almost 
magnetic influence of the elder woman’s murmured 
comfort soon helped her to master her fit of crying, 
and she sat up the more easily to pat her eyes with 
the crumpled ball of her handkerchief. Instinctively 
she smiled through her tears. 

“How awful, behaving like this at a party!” she 
said. 

“AVhat does it matter, nobody can see us; besides, 
you look much nicer as you are than most of the 
women here.” 

“Not shiny?—really and truly?” 

Agatha’s eyes twinkled. 

“Not a bit shiny.” 

They both laughed happily. 

“And now I’m going to hunt out that wretch of 
a husband of yours and pack the two of you off 
home. He ought to be ashamed of himself, letting 
you wear yourself out like this and forgetting all 
about you!” 

Joyce sprang at once, jealously, to Evelyn’s de¬ 
fence, as she had done weeks ago, at Stonechurch, 
on the occasion of another criticism. 

“He hasn’t been forgetful at all really, he’s had 


210 An Unknown Quantity 

so much to do, and—and he’s going to bring me a 
lovely drink.” 

‘‘Well, he’s going to take you home now, at any 
rate.” The words revived in Joyce all her yearning 
to get away from the stuffy, hostile room, on to 
the cool Embankment, into the quiet friendliness of 
Church Street, but a perverse stubbornness drove 
her to protest. 

“Oh, please don’t say anything, I’m not a bit 
tired really, and I expect I shall enjoy myself ever 
so after a bit.” 

“Nonsense, you’re only a child, and you ought to 
be in bed.” 

Agatha’s well meant efforts only strengthened the 
unaccountable opposition. Joyce felt, instinctively, 
that she must not allow this new influence to come 
between her and her husband. The suggestion must 
be his, she would not lift a finger to escape nor 
could she permit herself to take this proffered assis¬ 
tance. Therefore, though she longed above all 
things to go home, she set herself mulishly to fight. 
A sense, hitherto unsuspected, of pride, welled into 
her consciousness. She would not be weak, would 
not appeal to Evelyn: still less would she stand by 
and see the appeal made for her. 

“No, please, you mustn’t say anything, you 
mustn’t, you mustn’t!” There was a queer note of 
fierceness in her voice that made Agatha draw back 
surprised, and look at her. 

“Promise—promise that you won’t say a word!” 

“What a strange, obstinate, little creature you 
are! You know you want to go home!” 

“Promise!” 



An Unknown Quantity 211 

‘‘Very well then, if you really mean it I’ll 
promise.” 

Agatha’s voice was suddenly cold. The girl’s 
opposition annoyed her, it was so unreasonable. 
The sight, however, of the flushed, eager face, still 
tear-stained, softened her again, the irritation 
passed, and she added in a kindlier tone: 

“I wonder whether Evelyn realises what a little 
spitfire he’s married?” 

Joyce drew closer to her companion. 

“Oh, I’m not really a spitfire, don’t please think 
I am, only—I don’t want to go home.” 

“Well then, stay here and talk to me for a bit 
'—^hullo, here’s somebody you know! Good evening, 
Liell.” 

Beverley had wandered, unobserved, into the 
shadow cast by the window-curtain, and stood look¬ 
ing down at them with an expression of relished 
gloom. As Joyce, startled by Agatha’s words, 
glanced up at him, a slow smile, half sardonic, half 
kindly, flickered round his mouth. There was a 
moment’s silence, the smile broadened on his lips. 

“Good evening, Andromeda,” he said. 

Joyce found the strange, uncouth man disturbing. 
She had never yet determined whether she liked or 
disliked him. Of one thing only she was certain, she 
could not understand a single word he spoke, nor 
could she get rid of the unpleasant idea that he was 
secretly laughing at her. 

“So you’re being introduced to your life’s work?” 
he continued. “I hope you realise what a difficult 
job you’ve got.” ^ 

He turned his head and gazed for a moment at 
the noisy restless crowd that filled the studio. 


212 


An Unknown Quantity 

^‘Evelyn, I suspect, is thoroughly enjoying him¬ 
self. This sort of thing pours blood into him and 
—sucks it out again: a strange kind of vampire, hut 
none the less dangerous.’^ 

He moved across and leaned against the wall at 
Agatha’s side, turning half towards her. 

wonder whether, after all, she’ll be able to 
save him?” he said, for the moment utterly ignoring 
Joyce. A second later he addressed her again. 

‘‘Well, at any rate, you’re seeing us at our worst.” 

Agatha shook herself irritably. 

“Oh, Li ell, do say something the poor girl can 
understand! She’ll think you’re a lunatic: I believe 
she thinks you a fool already!” 

He continued as though he had not heard her. 

“And at our best too, I suppose, though what best 
there is is our luck rather than our desert. Jimmy 
has all the fortune of the ne’er-do-weel gold-digger. 
He’s a positive gift for staking out utterly worthless 
claims and then dropping suddenly, and quite un¬ 
deservedly, on to the real stuff. I’m not sure that 
the little Jew-boy isn’t a bit of a genius—when he 
forgets his affectations.” 

“Liell, you’re more than usually annoying and 
disgruntled to-night, what’s the matter?” 

“Oh, I suppose it’s the effect of David. The 
sight of ability always makes me more than nor¬ 
mally sensitive to the ineffectiveness of myself and 
my friends.” 

He brooded in silence for a minute or two and 
then moved slouchingly away. 


An Unknown Quantity 


213 


III 

About midnight the studio became definitely 
emptier and Joyce found herself hoping that now 
at last Evelyn would take her home. The hope was 
lively, but it was less despairing, less tinged with 
the colours of misery than it had been earlier, for 
though nothing had occurred to bring her into 
sympathy or even into touch with the habitues of 
Jimmy’s salon, she had been sitting for the last hour 
with Agatha, whose comments of mingled tolerance 
and irony had made the evening bearable. After 
Liell had wandered, disconsolately, away, they had 
been, for the most part, undisturbed in their window- 
seat, though from time to time Evelyn had bounded 
backwards and forwards across the room, dropping 
words like crumbs, but never staying long and never 
even suggesting departure. 

By now Agatha herself had reached the yawning 
stage. ‘‘Well, you obstinate child,” she said, “are 
you still determined not to let me tell your husband 
what I think of him? I should say you’ve stuck 
it long enough to satisfy even your pride. Besides, 
it isn’t good for Evelyn to have things all his own 
way like this. Just look at him prancing about like 
a Tom-cat embarrassingly conscious of its kitten- 
hood. Liell was right, you have got a difficult job!” 

Joyce smiled, but there was a pucker of bewilder¬ 
ment between her eyes. 

“Oh, I expect he’ll suggest going of his own 
accord now; almost every one’s gone already.” 

“You poor innocent, have they! You little know 
the lengths to which our James can go in pursuit 


214 An Unknown Quantity 

of the flaming ideal of hospitality. If I know him 
as well as I think I do he’s no intention of shutting 
up shop yet. There now, didn’t I tell you?” 

As if to support her prophecy their host’s voice 
could be heard arguing plaintively with some de¬ 
parting guest. ‘‘It’s frightfully early, don’t go 
yet!” and then to the room in general, “I say, you 
people, you must finish off the drink, why, the even¬ 
ing’s only just beginning!” 

The party had indeed reached the stage at which, 
for Jimmy, enjoyment, as opposed to the enthusi¬ 
astic performance of duty, began. Freed from the 
necessity of tending innumerable guests he could 
devote himself to the half-dozen or so who remained 
in the hope that he might persuade them, with the 
assistance of a few surviving bottles, to continue 
the symposium until dawn. Like a solitary mortal 
in a world of shades he moved, restless, taUvative, 
bubbling with vitality, about the circle of his ex¬ 
hausted friends, who were too sleepy, for the most 
part, to make the effort necessary for departure. 
Doris Carter and Stephen Langley had already 
vanished, but there still remained a formidable 
body of his intimates. Between the interstices of 
his talk the silence of exhaustion bulged into the 
room. In the aloof background of a distant corner 
David lay strumming sleepily upon his beloved 
balalaika. 

Suddenly “Bunny” jumped up from her chair 
and flung the door wide open. 

“Christ!” she said, “I’ve never been so hot in 
all my life! Also I’m rather drunk. Jimmy, you’ll 
have to give me a doss down on the sofa; I shall 
never get home!” 


An Unknown Quantity 215 

The suggestion appeared to cause her host neither 
surprise nor embarrassment. 

‘‘Right-0he replied, “I’ll get you a rug.” 

“Rug! You idiot, I want a jug of water and an 
emetic, otherwise nothing except to be left in peace. 
Oh damn! I’ve put my head through one of your 
canvases, James! Sorry, but I don’t suppose it 
matters much!” 

“I say, if you’d told me you wanted to lie down 
I’d have moved it, look what you’ve done!” 

“Don’t talk, James, for God’s sake! If I’ve 
spoiled one of your masterpieces I’ll paint you 
another one: it’ll be much better than yours.” 

“Bunny’s” sudden activity shook the company 
into a show of renewed life, and as a result of the 
shufiling that followed, Joyce found herself once 
again alone. Agatha had been summoned across the 
room to join, with her husband, Malcolm Prosser, 
and Scammel, who had arrived late and resplen- 
dently distinctive in full, elegantly tailored evening 
dress, in yet another discussion of details relating to 
the always about-to-be-born theatre. Evelyn, as a po¬ 
tential dramatist, drifted into the conversation, 
which, so far as could be inferred from the few 
words that escaped into the room, was mainly con¬ 
cerned with urging the exclusion from the scheme 
of certain apparently eligible persons. 

Scammel’s drawl wound its way lazily through his 
audience. “Well, my dear Jack, if you’ve gone as 
far as that I suppose you’ll have to carry it through, 
but I don’t know that Stephen’s really the kind of 
man we want, and I know that Cynthia doesn’t feel 
like putting up money for that sort of show. He’s 
a daring fellow and all that, but”—he shrugged his 


2i6 An Unknown Quantity 

shoulders—“don’t you see that we must keep this 
thing clear of preciosity?’’ 

Prosser deprecated timidly. “But look here, 
Scammel, I know that all the Drummond lot are 
keen about Stephen, they’ll stand by him and you 
can’t atford to lose them/^ 

“Of course we can afford it! Who’s running this 
business, Drummond, the ‘Mummers’ or we! 
They’ll jolly well have to do what we tell ’em. The 
whole point is we can get in with the people who 
matter and we’ve got to. Labour mistrusts the 
purely aesthetic: I happen to know that at next 
week’s Congress they’re appointing a sub-committee 
to inquire into the present state and future possi¬ 
bilities of the propaganda theatre—well, that’s just 
where we come in: there may even be talk of a 
grant.” 

Agatha interrupted softly the flow of his elo¬ 
quence. “But, Peter, I don’t think Jack’s idea was 
for a propaganda theatre at all, was it Jack!” 

Her husband, caught between two fires, hesitated, 
temporised. “Well, not exactly; you see, I-” 

“The essential point is that we’ve got to estab¬ 
lish ourselves,” Scammel interrupted. “Later on 
you can do as you like.” 

“As soon as we’ve got the money for propa¬ 
ganda!” suggested Agatha sweetly. 

Scammel continued unperturbed. “Look here, 
I’ve got an idea for next May Day. Why shouldn’t 
we have a Communist pageant in the theatre if it’s 
ready; if not, in the park! I believe the Prole¬ 
tarian could be persuaded to shoulder the expenses, 
and I know that Cynthia’s as keen as mustard.” 

Joyce listened dully to the altercation; it had no 



An Unknown Quantity 217 

interest and scarcely any meaning for her. Sud¬ 
denly she heard Liell at her elbow. 

‘‘I like the scheme/^ he said, ostensibly to her, 
bnt loud enough to be heard by the farther group. 
“In particular I feel drawn to the central episode, 
which must be, I presume, a life-like representation 
of Revolutionary financiers in conclave over the 
floating of a Communist loan at ten per cent.^’ 

Scammel glanced up angrily but said nothing, and 
Liell, satisfied that he had caused just the degree 
of annoyance at which he aimed, dropped his voice 
to a note of intimacy. 

“Does it really please you to see your husband 
hanging on to all thisT’ he asked. 

She looked up at him, struck by the unusual 
softness in his tone: her mouth trembled as she 
answered. 

“I don’t understand what they’re talking about.” 

“You don’t miss much.” 

“But Evelyn is so interested in it all, isn’t he?” 

“You mean he’s been neglecting you? Doesn’t 
it make you want to knock all their heads together ? 
It would me.” 

Before she could reply Jimmy staggered from 
behind the screen with more bottles, and at sight 
of him the group by the stove broke up and scattered 
its members over the room. 

“Shove along those glasses, Evelyn, there’s just 
enough for another drink all round. By the way, 
‘Bunny,’ why did Doris rush off so early?” 

The recumbent figure on the model’s dais sprang 
suddenly to life. 

“I believe she’s got designs on Stephen. The 


2i8 An Unknown Quantity 

profound tragedy of Doris’s life is that nobody has 
ever made an attempt upon her virtue.” 

There was a general laugh. Prosser lounged 
across the room. ‘‘Stephen’s otherwise engaged,” 
he said. 

“Is he? I thought Euth wasn’t with him now?” 

“He’s very much lie with somebody else, a girl 
from Lyons, I believe. He drapes her in ‘Omega’ 
fabrics and gets her to talk cockney to him while 
he writes.” 

The strumming on the balalaika stopped with a 
jerk. “Est ce qu’elle ressemble a les n%resses?” 

The question was plaintive with a common note of 
innocence. There was another roar of laughter. 

“Why didn’t he bring her along with him to¬ 
night?” sneered “Bunny”; “vre seem to be at home 
to wives—and things.” 

Joyce caught the insolent glint from the heavy- 
lidded eyes and blushed furiously in her dark 
corner. Evelyn, deep in conversation with Agatha, 
had not, it seemed, heard the last words. To every¬ 
body else in the room, however, their intention was 
obvious, and Jimmy, with a true instinct for lower¬ 
ing embarrassments, hastily dragged in a diversion. 

“I say,” he began, “we’re all going to the 
Chelsea Arts, aren’t we? It’ll be no end of a rag 
if we make up a party. Evelyn,” he added more 
loudly, “you’re coming, aren’t you?” 

Evelyn turned sharply. “What’s that?” he 
asked. 

“Chelsea Arts, next month, it’s going to be huge 
fun.” 

“Eather! of course we’ll come.” 

A discussion followed of arrangements for the 


An Unknown Quantity 219 

ball. In the middle of it Agatha looked across to 
where Joyce, silent and unnoticed, clung pathetic¬ 
ally to the obscurity of her window-seat. The sight 
angered her, and she turned to Evelyn. 

‘‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’’ she said 
with a note of exasperation in her voice. “You’re 
not fit to have a wife! Just look at that poor child, 
she’s got rings as large as saucers round her eyes; 
she’s almost asleep! Take her home at once.” 

He followed her gaze and became suddenly sen¬ 
timental. 

“I say, she does look worn out, poor little thing, 
I hadn’t noticed it.” 

Agatha was relentless. “I sometimes think you 
don’t notice anyone but yourself,” she retorted. 

He went quickly over to his wife. 

“What a brute I am, darling,” he said: “I was 
so busy talking that I never noticed how tired you’re 
looking. Let’s go home.” 

She wanted to reject the kindness in his voice, 
to stay where she was, even if she fell asleep, until 
he was ready to go away, not for her but because 
he himself wanted to, but at the sound of his words 
her strength of will broke. She was too lonely to 
fight: she must take the gift and sacrifice her pride. 

“Oh, do let’s,” she said. 


THE TWELFTH CHAPTER 


I 

A ll the way home from Swan Walk to Church 
- Street she was silent, conscious, behind the 
cloud of her sulkiness, of a faint gratitude for her 
husband ^s volubility. But for his continuous rattle 
she would have felt compelled to speak and her lips 
would have found no words. She wanted nothing, 
just now, but to be allowed to brood, to remember, 
to drench her heart with self-pity. That Evelyn had 
enjoyed his evening well enough she could see, 
though the reason of his satisfaction was beyond 
her power to guess. Try as she might—and though 
now a weary resentment forbade her to be judicial, 
she had made, earlier, the attempt—she could not 
“for the life of her’’ understand what source of 
pleasure he could find in those dreadful people, 
how he could possibly wish to spend hours in a 
room smelling of drink and tobacco, a room, as she 
put it to herself, “no better than a bar parlour.” 
Did he realise, at all, how “out of it” she had been, 
how miserable? In the luxury of her despondent 
retrospect she forgot the interlude with Agatha, 
forgot how, for a little while, she had been resigned, 
almost happy. In her present mood she saw the 
last few hours stretching backwards dark with a 
uniform, unbroken, gloom. Had he noticed nothing? 

220 


An Unknown Quantity 221 

At the most, she told herself, he had, after ever so 
long, taken notice of her fatigue, had been just a 
little bit contrite, had brought her home, but even 
that, she sardonically decided, was only because he 
himself had ‘‘had enough/’ He’d taken precious 
little notice of her so long as his friends had been 
there, so long as he had been amused! Even now, 
as soon as they had got into the open air, his mood 
had changed and he was talking and laughing about 
those friends as though he expected her to take an 
interest in them. “Didn’t she like them awfully?” 
“Wasn’t Jimmy a good sort?” “How typical 
Stephen had been!” Nothing all this while about 
her, no effort to understand her feelings! Just a 
“You did enjoy yourself, darling, didn’t you?” and 
then more talk, more laughter. 

As, in this way, she went over again in her mind 
the details of her humiliation, fierce anger over¬ 
came her first desire for tears. She didn’t know 
which of them all had been the worst, she only real¬ 
ised that she hated all of them: that horrid man 
who had said the poem with the dreadful words in 
it—she blushed at the memory—the awful girl with 
the fringe who had got drunk and insulted her 
under Evelyn’s very eyes, though he had noticed 
nothing, the little man who danced and made faces, 
even that Mr. Beverley who was always laughing at 
her and saying things she didn’t understand—on 
purpose! 

They hadn’t liked her, no, not from the very first 
. . . self-pity welled up dangerously . . . anger 
came to the rescue. She supposed they had despised 
her. Despise! Who Avere they to look down on her ? 
How awful the women had looked, either shiny or 



222 An Unknown Quantity 

all ‘‘made-up/^ with short hair, all smoking and 
kissing other people’s husbands—they weren’t any 
better than they should be probably, if the truth 
were known . . . the things they said! 

What was the use of her having married Evelyn*? 
He’d never told her it was going to be like this. 
She felt that she had been cheated. The memory 
of her talks with Hilda, of her dreams and ambi¬ 
tions, started the tears trickling down her cheeks. 
Why, she’d have been better otf with George after 
all, in a little house at the ‘‘Junction.” With a 
sudden pang of homesickness she thought of the 
river near by, of the jumble of familiar houses 
beyond so close and friendly. It wasn’t fair! She’d 
been so willing to learn, so willing to admit all the 
things she didn’t know about her husband’s world, 
but now!—it was a shame to expect her to make 
friends with people like that. . . . 

Evelyn’s high spirits left him at his own front 
door. Inside the house he felt unaccountably tired, 
depressed. He could not now help noticing Joyce’s 
silence, but he attributed it entirely to reaction from 
the evening’s excitement. 

“You’re quite worn out, darling,” he said; “you 
run along to bed; I’ll be up in a minute or Wo.” 

She answered nothing, but sat in the miniature 
dining-room choking back her tears and sipping 
hot milk. She had, from the very first, insisted on 
hot milk “last thing,” and though the idea was 
faintly, inexplicably distasteful to Eveljm, he had 
yielded to her whim. To-night she was more than 
ever thankful for it, since it brought real comfort. 
Her thoughts kept on, it is true, fluttering round 
her grievances, but, by the time she had emptied 


An Unknown Quantity 223 

the glass, she felt, on the whole, less miserable. 
Nevertheless, her little finger, after all these weeks 
of submission, was once again triumphantly rigid. 
Evelyn did not notice it. Had he done so he might 
have regarded it as a protest and an omen. 

She went up to bed slowly. For the first time 
since their marriage she longed to be alone, but 
that was impossible. They could not afford as yet, 
a bed for Evelyn’s dressing-room. . . . 

When, half an hour later, he followed her, she 
pretended to be already asleep, but in the warm 
darkness, with the square of window faintly glim¬ 
mering, her pride, and anger, and determination 
broke down. With a sob she caught his hand and 
drew him to her. 

“Oh, Evelyn,” she wailed, “you oughtn’t never 
to have married me. I told you you oughtn’t, but 
you took me off my feet. Your friends hate me; 
I knew they would. . . . ” 


n 

In the days that followed Joyce was forced to 
realise that it was not going to be so easy as she 
had imagined, if indeed it was going to be at all 
possible, to keep her husband’s work out of her own 
life. With a shock and a disturbing sense of griev¬ 
ance she saw that the future was to be complicated 
beyond anything that she had ever remotely 
dreamed. In some way, utterly incomprehensible 
to her, the dreadful people of whom she had had 
her first glimpse in Jimmy McLennan’s studio were 
mixed up inextricably, according to Evelyn, with 


224 An Unknown Quantity 

the process of producing the hooks upon which she 
was relying, so innocently, for their joint attain¬ 
ment of wealth and importance. She might not 
understand his masterpieces, but it appeared that 
she must, willy-nilly, enter into the life that was 
necessary for their writing. About this he had been 
uncomfortably firm. He had been, of course, ever 
so kind, that she admitted, had lovingly pooh-poohed 
the idea that she was a ‘Hailure,’’ had assured her 
that she would ‘‘get used to it,’’ had insisted that 
they all really liked her “enormously,” but to her 
statement that “she never could like them, no 
never,” he had been clearly unsympathetic, had 
even flared up in a momentary anger when she 
suggested that she didn’t want to see any of them 
again, that she wouldn’t have any of them in the 
house. The argument had been a long one and he 
had used words that puzzled her, had talked of 
“intellectual freedom,” “artistic stimulus,” “crea¬ 
tive sincerity,” and she had answered, quite simply, 
“Yes, Evelyn,” because she didn’t know what he 
meant and couldn’t think of anything else to say. 

At first she did really try to do as he wished. To 
make her feel at home in the surroundings he had 
chosen for her, he took her about Chelsea to meals 
in strange restaurants. Some of them, she thought, 
were just “weird” and rather nasty, with unaccus¬ 
tomed names and uncomfortable chairs, coarse, col¬ 
oured, badly made plates, and shockingly cooked 
food. Others seemed to her no better than public- 
houses and all her instincts rose in revolt at being 
asked to go into such places. In all of them the 
same people, so far as she could see, with the same 
voices and the same faces, from beneath the same 


An Unknown Quantity 225 

fringes or the same soft felt hats, greeted them with 
talk and laughter in which she never joined. Names 
were constantly flung at her, but she failed entirely 
to fit them to definite individuals. To her Evelyn’s 
friends remained indistinguishable. They did, she 
had to admit, proffer hands of friendship, and her 
inability to take and clasp them caused her moments 
of acute self-reproach. All of them, with the single 
exception of ‘‘Bunny” Cobbold, whose antagonism 
had been immediately manifest, strove hard to show 
her the measure of their acceptance. They tried to 
treat her naturally, to persuade her that they “took 
her for granted,” and she had to confess to herself, 
though she would never have said as much to 
Evelyn, that she didn’t in her heart of hearts, want 
to close with their offer. Had they all behaved to 
her with contempt or hostility the position would 
have been easier. She could then have taken her 
stand and called upon her husband for sympathy 
and support. As it was she had to nurse, miserably, 
the secret of her reluctance to take their friend¬ 
ship. Instinctively she felt that he would not 
understand. 

Nor was it only his friends who made her un¬ 
comfortable. He had such funny ideas, talked 
openly of things that made her feel ashamed of 
being in the room, and had once suggested that she 
should “bob” her hair, had offered even to do it 
for her! She had stood firmly against that, but it 
was her sole victory. In everything else he had his 
way. He wouldn’t let her have the books she liked, 
but gave her instead volumes that sent her to sleep, 
and when, on one occasion, she had suggested a visit 
to the “pictures,” he had been almost angry. 


226 An Unknown Quantity 

It wasn’t always, of course, so bad. Sometimes, 
when they were alone, he was the old Evelyn again 
—already she had grown accustomed to looking 
back a few weeks to the ‘‘old’’ days—sitting on the 
floor at her feet, saying pretty things to her, kissing 
her hair, telling her he loved her. Those were 
happy hours, and in the little drawing-room, with 
the smell of the London autumn creeping with dark¬ 
ness through the window, she felt glad and con¬ 
tented, conscious of a little thrill of power and 
ownership, forgetful, for the time being, of all the 
things that made her miserable and sulky. Even 
so she would have found her life almost unbearably 
exasperating but for one thing. Always, at the 
back of her mind lurked the vision of Stonechurch, 
the memory of his mother and all the talks they 
had had together. It was as though she encouraged 
herself with the thought that the life she wanted, 
that she had expected, was there all the time, though 
the road to it was, just now, strangely blocked. 
Down in the country, with his family, Evelyn had 
been so different, so much more what she wanted 
him to be, and the recollection of their honevmoon 
came back to her soothing and friendly, as though 
with a message of hope. Mrs. Kendle, surely, 
would join with her in hating this life of Chelsea 
studios, that she knew, and guessed that Evelyn 
knew it too. It was as if he were striving to enlist 
her as an ally against his family, and the more 
she thought of it the more she saw that she was 
“on the other side” with everything of happiness 
to gain from her loyalty. She had tried hard to 
overcome their first feelings of mistrust and dis¬ 
appointment, and she was certain that she had 


An Unknown Quantity 227 

succeeded. Time and again she told herself that 
Mrs. Rendle relied on her, trusted her to watch over 
Evelyn, because in the depths of her maternal heart 
she mistrusted all that part of his life from which 
she was shut out. 

In this way did Joyce justify her own desires by 
making their realisation into a duty, and the con¬ 
sciousness, in her moments of solitude with Evelyn, 
that she still had power over him, brought happi¬ 
ness to her because she knew that there to her hand, 
if only she knew how to use it, lay the weapon for 
her purpose. She would ^‘save him from himself’’ 
—the phrase came to her dimly echoing from some 
forgotten book. Even that strange Mr. Beverley had 
seemed to hint at something of the sort, but then 
she never could make out what he was talking 
about, he was just as difficult to understand as her 
husband. Still, he was one of Evelyn’s friends, so 
he must know, and he kept on hinting that she 
ought to do something. If only she knew what, 
exactly, she could do! everything was so difficult, 
so confused. Undoubtedly she had a duty . . . 
and then it would be so nice to live like a real 
lady. . . . 

She was at the height of one such mood when 
Rachel’s invitation arrived, almost, it seemed to her, 
as an answer to her perplexities. It was written 
in terms of extreme warmth, almost of enthusiasm, 
and the assumption, conspicuous from beginning to 
end, of a previous intimacy, permitted unwisely and 
incomprehensibly, to lapse, pleased Joyce even 
more than the flattering proposal that it cloaked. 
She forgot, as though it had never existed, her 
previous dislike of her sister-in-law. 


228 An Unknown Quantity 

She read the letter aloud to Evelyn at breakfast. 

. . .It’s such ages since we saw either of you, 
and as you ought really to have got over your 
honeymoon by now, you simply must come and dine 
next Friday. ...” 

There was a postscript. 

‘^We shall be almost alone, but I’m asking Mr. 
Dowsing specially for Evelyn. He mustn’t think 
that we don’t know any clever people. Do come.” 

As she put the letter down she smiled at her 
husband, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. 

think it’s awfully nice of her,” she said; ‘‘it 
will be fun.” 

Evelyn looked up quickly. 

“But, Joj^ce, you don’t really want to accept?” 
he asked. 

“Oh, Evelyn, of course!” 

“I thought you didn’t like Eachel?” 

“I thought it was her that didn’t like me, but she 
writes so nicely that I must have been wrong.” 

“My dear, it’s quite impossible!” 

“Impossible? what do you mean?” 

“It’s not the kind of house I want to go to: it’s 
against all my principles.” 

Joyce pushed her chair impatiently. “Oh, 
Evelyn,” she said, “I do wish you’d sometimes talk 
so as I could understand you!” 

He tried to soothe her rising irritation with a 
laugh. 

“If you’d lived in London trying to avoid rela¬ 
tions as long as I have, you would understand.” 

“Why do you want to avoid them if they’re kind 
to you ? ” 

“Because their kindness invariably takes the form 


An Unknown Quantity 229 

either of patronising or preaching. Both varieties 
are infernally dnll/^ 

“Oh, well, yon needn’t talk like that!” then, 
after a short panse, “I thought you were fond of 
your mother!” she inconsequently added. 

“I love my mother—particularly for living at 
Stonechurch. ’ ’ 

He realised, as he spoke, that the words were 
perverse, born of a desire to wound; he saw him¬ 
self being childish and unkind and found an excuse 
for the inexcusable in his dislike of discussions of 
any kind at breakfast. 

“It’s horrid of you to say things like that; 1 think 
your mother’s a dear!” 

The knowledge that he was utterly in the wrong 
increased his irritability. 

“She is, but we’ve been asked to dine with Eachel, 
not with her.” 

“Why don’t you want to?” 

“I’ve told you: if you want another reason you 
must realise that I can stand anything rather than 
the boredom of a smart dinner-party.” 

Joyce was by this time within measurable distance 
of tears. “I don’t know why you should think 
you’d be bored: she says she’s asked Mr. Dowsing 
specially to meet you.” 

“Oh God, what a treat!” 

“Evelyn!—anyhow he’s famous; I’m sure he is; 

I’ve heard Mr. Norris say so.” 

“Mr. Dowsing, as you call him, is doubtless one 
of those writers who contribute largely to the 
financial prosperity of Messrs. Hope, Cosser & 
Norris, but I don’t think that my career will be 


230 An Unknown Quantity 

blighted by the fact of my not making bis acquaint- 
ance/’ 

Joyce, like most of her class, had an instinctive 
hatred of sarcasm. She looked at her husband for 
a moment in silence, and then burst suddenly into 
a storm of weeping, face in hands, a crumpled heap 
of temper and misery, beside the used plates and 
empty cups of the breakfast table. 

“You are unkind,’’ she sobbed, “you don’t think 
of me a little bit. I want to go to d—dinner with 
Rachel ever so, and—and I never have what I like, 
and—and I’m not asking you to do anything dread¬ 
ful, only to let me have a little pleasure; I don’t 
know why you married me if you don’t w^ant me 
to be happy-!” 

Evelyn was jerked, by her tears, suddenly and 
painfully from the carefully prepared security of 
his ironic detachment. The shock of the outburst 
was disturbing. He went across to her and laid his 
hand on her shoulder. She shook it o:ff angrily, 
temper in the ascendant. 

He tried, gropingly, ignorantly, to soothe her, 
feeling his words inadequate before the furious 
onset of her tears. 

“Don’t, you mustn’t—you mustn’t say things like 
that! You know I only want you to be happy; I 
thought you were happy. Can’t you see that it’s 
just because I love you so that I can’t bear to have 
other people prying and breaking into our lives? 
I want everything to stay as it is. Can’t you be 
happy just here with me and our house and our 
friends?’^ 

“They’re your friends and they don’t like me; I 



An Unknown Quantity 231 

know they don’t. I want to have my own friends, 
and now, when I’ve got the chance, you won’t let 
me!” 

He had heard the complaint so often that its repe¬ 
tition made him angry. 

‘‘You say that, but it’s not true!” He spoke 
sharply, and at the sound her weeping broke out 
afresh. With a gesture of despair he turned from 
her, but only for a moment; the sound of the heart¬ 
broken sobs brought him back once more to her side, 
and when he spoke again a softened note of pleading 
had crept into his voice. 

“How can it be true? how can they know you 
yet? how can you know them? They’ll love you, 
Joyce, if only, if only you’ll let them.” 

He dropped to his knees and put his arm round 
her shoulders. “Darling, darling,” he said, “don’t 
try to change our lives: we can be so happy as I 
had planned, we are happy, we must be happy.” 

Then, as she made no movement, he got quickly 
to his feet and left the room. 

Alone, amidst the debris of her grief, she realised 
that this time he would have his way, that to struggle 
farther now would be useless. But beneath her feel¬ 
ing of chagrin and disappointment there formed a 
hard nucleus of determination. For the first time 
since her marriage, for the first time in her life, she 
saw clearly that from now on she must take, quite 
definitely, a line of action. And, as she faced the 
truth, an idea came to her, foolishly perhaps, and 
irrationally, but with comforting insistence, that, 
given time, though how and when she could not even 
guess, eventually she would win. 


232 An Unknown Quantity 

It was with a heart almost gay and a face almost 
smiling that she sat down to write to Eachel her 
letter of refusal. 


Ill 

The scene just described came to Evelyn with all 
the shock of complete surprise. It was as though, 
casually walking down a broad, well-lighted thor¬ 
oughfare, he had turned a corner to find, suddenly, 
the lamps extinguished, the pavement torn up, and, 
across his path, all the forbidding paraphernalia of 
a barricade. His wife^s quick show of temper had 
been, it is true, the culminating point of vague dis¬ 
contents. There had been, ever since the unfortu¬ 
nate evening in Jimmy’s studio, the evening upon 
which he had so valiantly relied, days of moodiness, 
outbursts of querulous complaint, but they had 
passed like shadows blown across a summer down, 
and he had attributed them to shyness, to fatigue, to 
anything, in fact, rather than to a deep-seated, tem¬ 
peramental hostility. Never before had they led to 
so violent an outbreak, nor woken in him, as now, so 
uncomfortable a sense of doubt and impotence. He, 
as clearly as his wife, realised that he had, as she 
expressed it, ‘ ‘ taken her off her feet. ’ ’ In courtship, 
and so far in marriage, the initiative, at every turn, 
had been his. He had captured her and the knowl¬ 
edge gave him an added sense of pleasure in pos¬ 
session. Now, for the first time, doubt came to him 
of her passivity. What if, after all, the picture 
wouldn’t hang as he meant it to? if, unaccountably, 
it wouldn’t ‘‘fit in” with his scheme of decoration? 
The question loomed, insistently above the horizon 


An Unknown Quantity 233 

of his consciousness, but he set himself, steadfastly, 
after the first uneasiness, to ignore it. It shouldn't 
spoil the sunlight, the cloud would pass: let him but 
take the right path, turn at the right point, and they 
could keep blue sky above them all the way. After 
all, he had already done so much, mightn’t what re¬ 
mained be just as easy of accomplishment? In the 
trivialities of her new life Joyce had proved an apt 
pupil. She no longer, so it seemed to him, thought in 
terms of ‘‘suites” and “serviettes,” her attitude to 
life was, in these details, approximately now his 
own; why, then, shouldn’t he shape her still farther 
to the mould and impress of his world? 

The mood of depression, like most of his moods, 
passed. He believed implicitly in his own power and 
in his understanding of women. He must humour 
her, but not too far; give way to her in unimportant 
details, but hold firmly to the essentials. Time was 
on his side, for in time she would undoubtedly dis¬ 
cover the delights of the life to which he had intro¬ 
duced her. It never occurred to him that anything 
more serious than strangeness lay at the bottom of 
her dissatisfaction. In a month or two she would be 
easy and intimate with his friends, would repay their 
quite obvious desire to accept with a readiness, as 
whole-hearted, to give. Why, even as it was she had 
succumbed to Agatha. He noticed, with pleasure, 
the friendship that was growing between them, and 
did everything in his power to encourage it. In a 
sudden readiness to “make allowances,” he ad¬ 
mitted to himself, that perhaps he had rather flung 
his cronies at the poor girl’s head, the experience 
might well have been embarrassing; but Agatha was 


234 An Unknown Quantity 

older, was married, and she understood. He only 
needed patience and all would come right. 

With the phrase he put his incipient troubles from 
him, content to face the future with easy optimism. 
Quite recently he had settled down again to write, 
and domestic worries, he found, interfered too 
fiercely with his work to be allowed a permanent 
place in his mind. 

His theory of marriage, formulated, like all such 
theories, in the white heat of youthful enthusiasm, 
and eclipsed temporarily by the insistence of his 
passion for Joyce, came back to him now, after their 
first few months together, with claims for renewed 
attention. According to it the artist must insist 
upon the due merging of his wife in the background 
of his existence. She must in no way alter the pat¬ 
tern of his life, but become, rather, an interwoven 
theme of rarer quality and more delicate beauty. 
Now that his first ecstasies had cooled he found the 
dictum admirable. It was not, he told himself in 
the words of the old song, that he loved her less, but 
that he saw the necessity of bringing their relation¬ 
ship to a balance of extremely nice adjustments. 
Hard upon the heels, therefore, of the discomfort 
occasioned to him by his wife’s sudden display of 
initiative, followed a decision to divert and occupy 
her mind with concerns involving less intimately 
their mutual peace. He did, he flattered himself, 
understand women, a phrase by which, in fact, he 
meant no more than the attribution to them of the 
few weaknesses to which he was not himself a slave, 
and faced by the particular problem of his wife, he 
found, for the time being at least, an apparent justi¬ 
fication of his psychological assumptions. 


An Unknown Quantity 235 

The date of the ball to which Jimmy had referred 
was now only ten days distant, and Evelyn soon dis¬ 
covered that in it he had to his hand the very weapon 
that he sought. The prospect was, for Joyce, one 
of overpowering attractiveness, and before the de¬ 
licious sweep of excited preparation the army of her 
brooding discontents broke and fled. At any time the 
idea would have absorbed her mind to the exclusion 
of all other thoughts, and now it kept her in a condi¬ 
tion of almost hysterical excitement. For the first 
time she was to reap some of the hoped-for fruits of 
her marriage. She was to see the world, to share the 
wonders of a great function, to take her place 
definitely in the ranks of those women who went to 
dances patronised by the Press. How often, in the 
old days of stuffy ‘‘tube’’ journeys, had she pon¬ 
dered the blurred photographs of her Daily Mirrory 
studying with awed wonder the groups of fantastic 
revellers, seeing in the flash-light records of “Mr. 
This, Lady That, and friend” beings of an almost 
supernatural splendour and quite undeniable aloof¬ 
ness. And now . . . ! her heart beat at the prospect 
of remote possibilities. As the day approached her 
enthusiasm broke into a cascade of questions. 

“Oh, Evelyn, do you think they’ll photograph 
us?” 

“My dear, they’ll photograph anybody who pays 
them. ’ ’ 

Her mouth drooped at the thought of such venality. 

“But will they want to photograph us?” 

He kissed the smile back into her puzzled eyes. 

“My dear little goose, of course they’ll want to 
photograph you, because you’ll be the most wonder- 


236 An Unknown Quantity 

ful thing that^s ever been seen, the Columbine of a 
dream/’ 

Charmed by her eagerness he had designed for 
her a dress of fairy moonlight, ‘‘A Taglione bal¬ 
lerina, ’ ’ he had told her, and described the graceful, 
billowing skirt, the tight bodice, the thick braids of 
hair drawn down to frame her face. At first she had 
been doubtful, hinting at richer splendours, some¬ 
thing ‘‘Eastern,” something vaguely remembered 
from old visions of Mirror photographs, but he had 
succeeded, finally, in firing her imagination with the 
flames of his own ideal, so that, though she pointed 
out the obstacles to achievement, she admitted the 
wonderful desirability of the plan. 

“It would have to be made most awfully well,” 
she announced with that serious air of mystery as¬ 
sumed by all women when they refer to those secrets 
of dressmaking supposed to be beyond the compre¬ 
hension of men. 

“Well then, let it be made to perfection by the 
wonderfullest of all dressmakers!” he replied. 

“Oh, Evelyn dear, but that’ll be most dreadfully 
expensive. ’ ’ 

“Blow the expense if it’ll make you really happy 
—and compel the Press Association to take your 
photograph! ’ ’ 

She flung her arms round his neck. 

“You are a dear I” she cried, and kissed him with 
more passion than she had ever shown before. 

He held her to him, and in the kindly shadow of a 
prospective ballet dress the memory of their discon¬ 
tents faded to a ridiculous unreality. 

The ecstasy of anticipation did not diminish. 
Joyce found the days immediately preceding the ball 


An Unknown Quantity 237 

the happiest since her marriage. For the first time 
she was completely contented and in the radiance of 
her happiness Evelyn basked at ease, congratnlating 
himself upon the astuteness that had shown him the 
way, so broad, and easy, and well-paved a way, to 
domestic peace. Never had he found his wife so at¬ 
tractive. Excitement and gratitude woke her to an 
active show of love such as she had rarely before ex¬ 
hibited. To see her thus gave him a feeling that now 
and for ever he was master of the problems from 
which, such a short time before, he had shrunk with 
an almost frightened surprise. Misgiving slept, and 
he turned once more, with a renew^ed sense of detach¬ 
ment and concentration, to his work. 

The days passed for Joyce in a golden haze of de¬ 
light, and as the amazing dress approached comple¬ 
tion she felt, irresistibly, a desire to share her 
pleasure, to discuss and exhibit the splendours of 
her happiness in a way she could not do with her 
husband. She longed for a friend who would be jeal¬ 
ous but sympathetic, some one of her own age who 
could appreciate her excitement. The sense of her 
loneliness cast the faintest of shadows over her new 
delight and she set herself seriously to find some way 
of dissipating it. Suddenly, as she pondered, the 
thought of Hilda came to her as an inspiration. 
Since the morning of her wedding she had lost sight 
of her old companion and now the longing to see her 
swept intolerably upon her. She must see her: the 
desire, born in a moment, had all the strength of a 
wish long cherished and long unrealised. There was 
so much to show her, so much to talk over. Com¬ 
punction at her own neglect, added to her present 
eagerness for sympathy and admiration, found 


238 An Unknown Quantity 

solace in an impulsive invitation to tea. For twenty- 
four hours she was tortured by a fear that Hilda 
might refuse, might feel affronted at so long a 
silence, might even have slipped entirely beyond 
reach of her letter. The violence of her feel¬ 
ing surprised her. For months she had not even 
thought of her friend, and yet, now, quite sud¬ 
denly, she felt the need of her so overpower- 
ingly that she counted the hours to a possible 
answer. On the second day it came and she almost 
danced for joy. Hilda was coming! There was not 
the faintest suspicion of reproach in the few lines of 
her acceptance, only pleasure at the prospect of a 
meeting. For Joyce this was the crown of her 
week’s happiness, for she was about to recapture the 
joy of her old life, to revive old confidences, to share 
with her one and only friend the still wonderful 
hopes of the future. 

AVhen the day arrived, moved by a desire to have 
Hilda uninterruptedly to herself, she persuaded 
Evelyn to go out for the whole afternoon. Then, 
partly to fill the waiting hours, partl}^ to shape for 
herself a symbol of the amazing future, she ar¬ 
ranged and rearranged upon her bed the marvellous 
dress. Next, in her restlessness, she set her tiny 
drawing-room in new order, and finally, with still an 
hour before her, she waited. 

The meeting was not a success. Joyce from the 
dining-room window saw the embarrassment on 
Hilda’s face as she came shyly up from the little 
iron gate. It was as though the house, with the very 
best intentions in the world, had cast a spell over the 
visitor. To show the warmth of her welcome she 
opened the door herself while the ‘‘girl’’made noises 


An Unknown Quantity 239 

with the tea-tray in the kitchen. There was a certain 
sacrifice in the act, for she had intended to have 
her friend ‘‘announced,’’ and yet, at the very mo¬ 
ment of greeting, she felt that her impulse had been 
misunderstood, heard, as clearly as though words 
had been spoken, Hilda’s charge of condescension. 
And yet it was Hilda who said the first words. 

“Well, old dear,” she cried, “you are it and no 
mistake! ’ ’ 

Could it be that the voice was louder and the tone 
coarser than it used to be? The doubt, in the mo¬ 
ment of its passage, held Joyce mute, torn by a sud¬ 
den sense of disloyalty. She put it from her and 
smiled a full welcome. 

“ It nice to see you, Hilda; do come up and take 
off your hat.” 

Unconsciously she accented the gentleness of her 
own intonation and realised that she was taking un¬ 
usual trouble over the choice of words. As a result 
the difference between the two women, always, 
though of old far less violently, noticeable, became 
as a thick barrier between them. At the moment of 
her new-born affection for her old friend the sense 
of superiority gave Joyce no pleasure: it merely hurt 
her; for it seemed an added treachery. 

On the staircase Hilda stopped before a picture 
hung low in the direct light from the landing window. 
It was Jimmy’s wedding present. 

‘ ‘ Hullo! ’ ’ she exclaimed, ‘ ‘ what’s that ? ‘ Fun in a 
Bake’ouse,’ or ‘Tim’s First Trousers’?” 

Joyce stiffened at the laugh that followed the 
words. “It’s by a friend of Evelyn’s; he’s ever so 
clever,” she replied. 

“Evelyn?—oh, Harry, I suppose you mean; 


240 An Unknown Quantity 

caught me bending that time, you did! changed hs 
name ? ’ ^ 

^‘It is his name.’^ 

“Well, it wasn’t one time. Never mind, dear, I 
expect it’s a bit more classy, specially when you’ve 

got to live up to ‘Fun in a Bake-,’ to ’is friend’s 

pictures, I should say.” 

“It’s a nice name, I think, don’t you?” 

“Well, it’s a funny one, more like a girl’s.” 

The words came to Joyce like a whisper from her 
own past, and the only feelings they roused in her 
were, strangely, those of anger. She had summoned 
up the ghosts of old days and now, unaccountably, 
they were round her, not with the smile of friendli¬ 
ness she had looked for, but mocking and dimly hos¬ 
tile. She hurried Hilda to her room. 

At tea there was still awkwardness between them. 
As she watched her old companion stiff and con¬ 
strained upon the sofa, as she busied herself at the 
little table and filled the flowered cups (copied so 
carefully from the set at Stonechurch), Joyce 
realised that to Hilda it must all seem just ostenta¬ 
tion, that she must feel, oh, so unjustly of course, 
that she had been asked solely that her friend might 
patronise and humiliate her. If only she could make 
her see how wildly she had looked forward to the 
meeting, how passionately she wanted the old friend¬ 
ship back again! Tears of self-pity rushed to her 
eyes; it was so unfair after all the trouble she had 
taken to make the afternoon a success. 

She fought her way back to self-control. 

“How’s George?” she asked. 

“George Bendy? Oh, he’s all right. Me an’ him’s 



An Unknown Quantity 241 

getting married as soon as ’e’s saved enough for fur¬ 
nishing. We had a lovely time at Margate in July.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, I am glad! I always hoped you would. ^ ’ 

Hilda could not resist the temptation of a thrust, 
the only one, she felt, that from her position of 
strategic inferiority she could give. 

‘‘Oh well, it’s all been for the best. It was only 
the other day he said that it was really me ’e’d 
wanted all the time, only you come and sort o’ took 
’im otf ’is feet, like.” 

She sipped her tea with an air of faintly outraged 
gentility. “You see,” she added in a softer voice, 
“you weren’t never ’is sort, not really; you was al¬ 
ways one for making a splash.” 

The unexpected note of kindness broke through 
Joyce’s defence. She hid her face, suddenly, in her 
hands and burst into tears. 

In a moment Hilda was beside her, and when she 
spoke it was, at last, with the voice of old days. 

“Don’t, dear, don’t,” she cried. “Oh, what’s the 
matter, aren’t you ’appy? You mustn’t cry like 
that; you’ll ’ave me off too if you don’t take care.” 

Joyce’s arm was round her in a sudden fierce im¬ 
pulse of affection; she drew her down to her, holding 
her close. 

“I wanted it all to be so nice,” she whispered. “I 
wanted us to be as we were, and now you think me a 
horrid stuck-up thing; you believe I’ve been showing 
off, and—and it’s all awful!” 

At the exquisite pathos of her own words she 
choked with renewed sobs. 

Hilda, all trace of resentment vanished, comforted 
her with cheerful common sense. 


242 An Unknown Quantity 

’Ave your cry out, my dear,’’ she said; ‘‘you’ll 
feel all the better for it.” 

They sat in silence while twilight filled the room. 
At last Joyce spoke again, quietly now, though her 
voice was tremulous still with smothered tears. 

“It’s been so difficult and I’ve been miserable,” 
she said. 

Hilda was resolute in her cheerfulness. “Cheer 
up, chicken!” she laughed, ‘'you’YQ got nothing to be 
miserable about; just look at your ’ouse an’ every¬ 
thing, fancy crying over them!” 

“I haven’t got any friends now, not real friends, 
and I was so looking forward to seeing you, and then 
you seemed as though you didn’t want to be friends 
any more.” 

Her voice broke again on a sob and Hilda made a 
sudden movement of departure. Joyce clung to her. 

“Oh, don’t go!” she cried, “don’t go!” 

‘ ‘ If you say things like that I will, straight away. ’ ’ 

In the dark they sat and talked and Joyce grew 
calm again, and laughed, and discussed old friends 
and past enjoyments. The ghosts seemed kinder 
now, but still they held aloof and she realised, faintly, 
that she could never recapture wholly the life she had 
left; saw too, clearly now, that in her heart of hearts 
she didn’t want to. Suddenly, in a pause, she 
started. 

“Why, if I haven’t forgotten all about the dress!” 
she cried. 

Together they went again upstairs, and, with an 
almost frightened gentleness, she took from her 
wardrobe the billowing whiteness and laid it, as 
though it had been a child, upon the bed. And then. 


An Unknown Quantity 243 

as though it had been a child, they fondled and 
made much of it, so that, in their pleasure, all 
thoughts of disagreement and unhappiness were for¬ 
gotten. 

‘‘I shall look in the Mirror/^ Hilda announced 
finally. ‘‘My word, won’t old George laugh!” 

“I wish you were going to be there too.” 

“ In me old jumper and the panama! I should look 

a one and no mistake!” 

***** 

When at last they parted it was with laughter. 

“ 1 6^0 hope you and George will be happy,” Joyce 
said with her final kiss. 

“Come again soon,” she called as the little iron 
gate squeaked farewell, but even as she spoke she 
knew, and the knowledge gave her now but a mo¬ 
mentary pang, that in the future they would not 
often meet. 

“Kight-o, my dear,” Hilda called back, “and I 
shall keep that Mirror 

She waved her hand and turned towards the Em¬ 
bankment. She too saw clearly, and without bitter¬ 
ness, that the old intimacy had flared only to go out. 

Left alone Joyce went again to her room and stood 
looking at the dress glimmering on the faint white¬ 
ness of the bed. It had been nice to see old Hilda, 
and to know that George had forgiven her. Still, of 
course, they were diiferent; there was no getting 
over that. The sadness of the thought was no longer 
passionate: it came and went now with a pleasant 
sense of melancholy. How lovely the ball would be! 
She took the dress in her arms and held it close to 
her. Somehow she felt that it was a friend and ally. 


244 An Unknown Quantity 

and, as she put it back in the wardrobe, she was 
happy and vaguely triumphant. Perhaps it was that 
she saw clearly now that there could be no going 
back, that she must make her stand on the ground 
that she had chosen. 


THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER 


P erhaps, just for a moment, there did flash 
through Joyce’s mind, where memory of 
Jimmy’s studio still lingered, the possibility of dis¬ 
appointment in the supreme adventure of the ball. 
Such a doubt, however, if born grew to no stature. 
Into the mad whirl of final excitement and the 
crowning rapture of her dressing, she could admit no 
suspicion of failure. She laughed and sang as the 
‘‘girl,” eyes wide with wonder, helped with the 
preparations, and so infectious was the sound of her 
merriment that the “girl” laughed too and thought 
sentimentally of the evening at the “pictures” she 
was to have when “they” had gone. Evelyn came 
in to do her hair, for he had insisted that no pro¬ 
fessional could find the sweep and pattern that could 
frame and accentuate the pure white oval of her face. 
He, to please her, had “dressed up” too, under pro¬ 
test, for though he was rapturous in the planning of 
her transformation, he took no interest in his own. 
She had insisted, however, and there he was now, 
before her, crimped, and curled, and high-waisted, 
in “period,” as befitted her companion, and she 
thought that never had he looked so handsome. 

“Oh, Evelyn!” she cried at sight of him, “you 
look lovely, like—like a lord!” 

245 



246 An Unknown Quantity 

At that he laughed, and stopped suddenly in the 
midst of patting and arranging the shining masses 
of her hair, to pull at a handful until her face, seri¬ 
ous and full of a strange happiness, was tilted back 
to him. 

‘‘Oh, you’re hurting!” she said. 

He bent to kiss her, upside down beneath his low¬ 
ered head, like the reflection of a nymph in water. 

“Kidiculousest deliciousness!” he murmured. 

For a while he worked in silence, and, as he felt 
her head beneath his hands, the old tide of his pas¬ 
sion caught him in its eddy. Once again there came 
to him the full sensation of possession, the violence 
of the first days of his love. At that moment it was 
as though nothing, since the day of their marriage, 
had come to shadow, however lightly, the blazing 
sunshine of his happiness. 

At last he stood back and, head dropped critically, 
regarded her. 

“Now, madam,” he said, “you are equipped to 
kill, and I am your first victim. ’ ’ 

He stepped forward to give a final touch, and, as 
his fingers swept her forehead, she caught his wrist 
and drew him to her. Then, of her own accord, she 
kissed him. 

To both of them the silence seemed full of a 
strange, inexplicable quality, ominous, heavy with 
adventure. It was as though they realised some 
crisis, pendent by a hair, above them—as though, in 
some way unexplained, their relationship had, in six 
seconds, subtly changed. 

His hands were on her shoulders, but he let them 
slip slowly, voluptuously, to her waist. He caught 
her close, body to body, his face against her breast. 


247 


An Unknown Quantity 

For a moment she yielded, but her face turned side¬ 
ways, saw a flashed vision in the mirror. She 
pushed him away. 

“Oh, don’t, Evelyn,” she said, “you’re crumpling 
my dress.” 


II 

From the maze of passages they passed into the 
dazzling immensity of the hall. Joyce, gasping like 
a timid bather knee-high in the shore waves, stopped, 
both hands linked to the protective firmness of her 
husband’s arm. It was more wonderful than any¬ 
thing she had ever imagined. Never, in her most 
fantastic dreams (she was ill practised in fantasy), 
had she conceived a fairyland so completely satisfy- 
ing. 

“Evelyn,” she whispered, “isn’t it gorgeous!^^ 

As she looked up through the swinging, interlacing 
beams of coloured light, to the misty blackness of the 
enormous roof, she felt dwarfed as she had never felt 
beneath the stars. They walked on slowly over the 
gigantic floor and colours span and twinkled round 
her until they dazzled her as no sunlight had ever 
done. She was conscious of the flood and beat of life 
that swept round her until she seemed to herself to 
be but an insignificant part of the huge, broken 
rhythm of light and sound. For the first time Life 
caught and flung her to and fro, for the first time she 
knew the intoxication of mere existence. Never, not 
even in her husband’s arms, had she felt as she did 
now, the throb of her body, the wild freedom of 
laughter. 

From somewhere, from a great distance it seemed. 


248 An Unknown Quantity 

a band swelled into sound, struggled for a moment 
with the babble of voices, and then, triumphantly, 
soared to mastery. On the moment the pattern 
round them changed, hung eddying for a moment like 
smoke in a draught, then quickened into a new 
rhythm. Without a word she seized Evelyn, put his 
arm about her, and swept him into the dance. He 
danced badly, but she seemed oblivious of his clumsi¬ 
ness. The beat of the tune, the intoxication of move¬ 
ment, were in her blood. She was happy with a hap¬ 
piness that seemed concentrated in the moment. 
Here and now, it seemed, was the justification for 
everything that had gone before: just they two held 
close in a whirl of faces. 

‘‘Let^s walk about and look at the dresses,’’ she 
said as the music stopped. 

Arm in arm they sauntered round the gigantic 
arena that seemed to stretch away from them, now 
that the crowd of dancers was scattered, like a desert. 
Instinctively they moved towards the surrounding 
barrier, for in the middle, upright among the sprawl¬ 
ing couples who covered the floor like strange, exotic 
flowers, they felt naked and exposed. 

They wandered round, and Joyce felt the first 
ecstatic wonder and excitement, little by little, fade. 
The sense of life, of her own individuality, was still 
strong within her, but in the ceaseless flow of faces 
she began to be conscious of feeling lost, of being of 
no importance. Her dress, so wonderful, so comfort¬ 
ing, when she had put it on in the solitude of her own 
room, was nothing in such a crowd. Every one who 
passed her seemed more resplendent than she was, 
and she began to regret that ‘‘something Eastern” 
after which, in her first enthusiasm, she had hank- 


An Unknown Quantity 249 

ered. Excitement made her greedy of notice, and 
barely a glance had come her way. 

As they stood for a moment against the barrier, 
she heard a voice behind her, a man’s voice. ‘‘I say, 
doesn’t that girl look jolly, so simple and fresh.” 

Quickly she turned her head to see the speaker. 
He was standing one of a party, in a box, and she 
was conscious that, following his lead, five people 
were looking at her, smiling, approving. She was 
masked and she smiled back, confident again in a 
flash, caught up anew on a wave of pride and happi¬ 
ness. 

The music started, the great floor leapt into new 
life, and the eyes of the party in the box no longer 
looked at her. 

Evelyn turned. 

‘‘Shall we dance again?” he asked. 

“Let’s go on walking round,” she replied, “it’s 
much more fun; it’s so hot dancing.” 

She glanced curiously at the boxes, wondering 
whether other eyes had seen and approved. The 
small, brightly lit enclosures filled her with a new 
excitement. Hitherto she had not noticed them, for 
her attention had been absorbed by the novelty of the 
swaying, changing kaleidoscope of dancers. Now 
she looked at them with a fresh interest. Tier on 
tier they rose into the shadows of the dome. Men 
and women were leaning from them, laughing, 
throwing streamers of bright paper on to the crowd 
beneath. Into those on the level of the floor she 
glanced curiously, and found herself, with a start, 
a prey to envy. She wondered who the people were 
who sat so patronisingly aloof, applauding the car¬ 
nival below them, from the leisured comfort of 


250 An Unknown Quantity 

chairs and supper tables. How lovely to be rich and 
splendid, to enjoy everything at ease without having 
to bump and jostle and sprawl. One could be seen 
too. If only she was in a box others would look as 
she was looking, and admire her dress, and wonder 
who she was. 

‘‘Oh, look!’’ she said suddenly, “there’s Maurice 
Transome the actor, and Muriel Belfort; I’m sure 
it is.” 

She seized Evelyn and pulled him forward for a 
nearer view. 

“How lovely she looks, and oh, do look, there’s 
all the ‘Mixed Pickles’ company!” 

Evel^m smiled: how adorable she was in her ex¬ 
citement ! 

“I wish I knew who everybody was; I’m sure 
they’re all famous!” 

“My dear, I’m not sure that most of them aren’t 
merely rich!” 

She took no notice of the sneer. At any other time 
it would have vaguely worried her; she hated him to 
be sarcastic, but now she was too interested and 
thrilled to notice his churlishness. 

“Oh, who is thatr’ she continued, “up there, lean¬ 
ing over the box, isn’t she hugef^^ 

“She’s probably the wife of the tiny man in the 
' corner. I can’t otherwise account for him.” 

She glanced up at him, pouting. 

“You’re being horrid,” she protested; “I believe 
you’re making fun of me. I do want to know about 
everybody so, and I believe you don’t want to tell 
me!” 

“What a little baby it is! let’s guess together, for 
I’m just as ignorant as you are. Now then, here 


An Unknown Quantity 251 

goes!’’ reading from left to right. ‘‘I should say: 
actor, soap-manufacturer, Scotsman (it is a profes¬ 
sion you know), actor, stockbroker disguised as a 
gentleman, lady of easy virtue and still easier vice— 
Hullo dear, what’s the matter? I thought you 
wanted to know!” 

“I hate you to say things like that!” 

‘^But they’re unfortunately true, my darling.” 

“You didn’t ought to say them! besides, it’s their 
names I want to know.” 

“Well then, we ought to have a catalogue; per¬ 
haps the old gentleman upholstered to look like a 
beaf-eater will give you one if you ask him nicely! 
I’m sure all the exhibits have got numbers: no doubt 
they’ll put them on at midnight!” 

His tone puzzled her: was he just making fun or 
not? 

‘ ‘ Do yon really think so ? ” she asked. 

“Absurd gooselet! come along and dance; it’s bet¬ 
ter than looking at a lot of old frumps!” 

“Don’t you know who any of them are, then?” 

“Not a single little one! oh yes I do though!”— 
his eyes had wandered to a box on the first tier— 
“that’s Scammel up there, showing the promised 
land to the children of Israel! ’ ’ 

“Who’s he?” 

“Scammel? Oh, a writer.” 

“Like you?” 

“You flatter me, beloved! perhaps I ought to have 
said a successful writer.” 

“Isn’t he smart!” 

“A truer word was never spoken!”^ 

“And oh, look there, two boxes farther on, that’s 
Mr. Aylmer Featherstone. ” 


252 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘The novelist?’’ 

“Yes, he used to come to the office.” In a sudden 
burst of loyalty she added, “I don’t think he looks 
nearly as nice as you, and I’m sure he isn’t half as 
clever! That’s his wife, she used to come with him: 
don’t you think she’s awfully pretty?” 

“My dear, you mustn’t ask me questions like that, 
I’m prejudiced!” 

The compliment was lost on her, for she was 
plunged in sudden thought. After a pause, as 
though she had been pondering deep possibilities, 
she spoke again in a voice of awe. 

“Do you think there are lots of writers in Those 
boxes?” 

“All the popular ones I should think: it’s part of 
the game.” 

“Oh, Evelyn, wouldn’t it be lovely if-” 

The end of her sentence was lost, for at that mo¬ 
ment her husband pulled her quickly towards the en¬ 
trance near which they had been standing. 

“Why, there’s Jimmy!” he cried. 

At the sound of his voice there was a sudden flash¬ 
ing of arms, legs and draperies, a few paces from 
them, and through the rents of flapping garments, 
the face of Jimmy McLennan beamed, obvious to all 
despite the fragments of disguise still clinging to 
portions of it. 

“My dear Jimmy! what have yon got stuck all 
over you?” 

‘‘ Oh, I thought I’d put a beard on for fun, but half 
of it fell off, and it’s so hot that I pulled the rest otf 
too!” 

“But it isn’t off!” 

“'’sn’t it? oh well, all that matters is anyhow!” 



An Unknown Quantity 253 

He dabbed ineffectually at bis chin, with the result 
that a lump of crepe whisker transferred itself intel¬ 
ligently to the middle of his cheek. 

say, isn^t this dress topping 1 it^s part of 
Bunny^s curtains: we all went round there to feed; 
I think it’s rather good.” 

“It suits you, Jimmy, I don’t suppose it would be¬ 
come anyone else: look here, where is everybody? 
we’ve been going round for hours without seeing 
you.” 

“Bunny’s over there with Stephen”—^he pointed 
vaguely in the direction of the orchestra—“and 
Louis’s dancing round somewhere, and oh, every 
one^s knocking about; I’ve run into heaps of people. 
I say, what a ripping show it is! ” 

His irresponsible schoolboy laugh rang through 
the blare of the music. He capered wildly. 

“My dear James, do behave! you haven’t said 
good evening to Joyce; perhaps you didn’t recognise 
her through her mask. ’ ’ 

“By Jove, no! I say, Joyce, you do look top-hole I” 

She stiffened instinctively at his use of her Chris¬ 
tian name, but the frank admiration in his tone, and 
the laugh, as of a happy child, that followed it, forced 
an unwilling smile to her lips. 

“What a gorgeous tune! we simply must dance!” 
and with a laughing don’t mind, do you?” over 
his shoulder to Evelyn, he seized her without waiting 
for protest or acquiescence, and spun with her into 
the middle of the hall. 

The technique of Jimmy’s dancing was inferior 
even to Evelyn’s, but what it lacked in finish it made 
up in abandon. Bound and across they bumped and 
jolted, the window curtain flowing triumphantly 


254 An Unknown Quantity 

from Jimmy’s shoulders, his legs making fantastic 
curves and angles, his feet, for the most part, on 
hers. She was carried away by the violence of the 
adventure, and in the reeling progress of their com¬ 
bined manoeuvre she found a sort of nightmare 
pleasure. On and on they went, crashing into pro¬ 
testing couples, tripping and slipping, but always un¬ 
defeated. Her partner’s ‘‘Awfully sorry!” and 
“Oh, I say!” interwoven with his constant laugh, 
ran a ceaseless obbligato to the music. 

In their mad career she forgot, for the moment, 
everything but the joy of utter irresponsibility. 
Gone was all anxiety for her dress, all envy of the 
fortunate inhabitants of boxes, all speculation as to 
the possibility of success for the wives of literary 
men. It was as though, in a few seconds, she had 
dropped back into almost forgotten gaieties, “out¬ 
ings” of the days before she had first met Evelyn. 
One memory in particular came back to her, of a re¬ 
gatta night at Broadstairs, when with George Bendy 
triumphant and proprietary at her side, she had for¬ 
gotten the gentility of Clapham in the intoxicating 
novelty of rattles and confetti. 

The music stopped, but Jimmy still unwearied, 
seized her hand and pulled her through a neighbour¬ 
ing doorway and down a long corridor to the refuge 
of an empty alcove. Here at last, on a sofa, he flung 
himself down and exhaled the last gusts of his energy 
in an enormous sigh. Like a pricked balloon he 
shrivelled into silence. 

Joyce lay back beside him contentedly. 

“I must take this off,” she said; “I’m boiling.” 

She unfastened the strings that held the black vel- 


An Unknown Quantity 255 

vet mask across lier eyes, and holding it in her hand, 
started to use it as a fan. 

For a while they sat in silence, then, as she grew 
cooler, she began to be uncomfortably aware of the 
exposed position of their refuge. It may or may not 
be possible to hear music to advantage in the Albert 
Hall: it is, indubitably, beyond the power of any save 
the hardiest, to endure for long the rigours of au¬ 
tumnal revels in its draughty passages. She shiv¬ 
ered. 

The movement roused her neighbour to speech. 

‘‘Oh, I say, how forgetful I am! you’ll catch your 
death of cold here I” 

He caught up the pendant folds of his window 
curtain and flung them round her bare shoulders. 
The action brought them close together, and he no¬ 
ticed the pretty flush of her excitement, the shining 
of her eyes. 

“You do look topping!” he said. 

The tribute pleased her: she smiled round at him. 

“Do you really like my dress?” she queried. 

‘ ‘ I should think I did! ’ ’ 

Jimmy had all the schoolboy’s delight in doing the 
“right thing,” and he had made a special study of 
the peculiar “rightness” recognised in Bohemia. 
That delectable country had still for him a magic 
that remained untarnished because—though this he 
did not realise—he continued to regard it through 
the spectacles of a tint so violently romantic that no 
experience could ever take the imparted colour from 
the scene. To live to the full in the world of his 
choice, to become, to the minutest detail, its citizen, 
was for him an ideal that wore a complexion almost 
religious, and in nothing was he more scrupulous 



256 An Unknown Quantity 

than in observing the demands of a devil-may-care 
amorousness. It was not that Jimmy’s nature was 
inflammable—neither his body nor his heart had so 
far met any temptation supremely irresistible—but 
that he felt it “in the picture” to display a degree 
of warmth expressible only through the medium of 
caresses. At his studio parties he was apt to kiss all 
his female guests, as Joyce had already misunder- 
standingly noticed. He did so, as a matter of fact, 
in the manner of a boy who, on holiday for the first 
time from a public school, will boastingly display his 
newly garnered treasure of slang. 

Now, therefore, as one fulfilling a duty, “I say,” 
he repeated, “you are topping!” and, with the last 
word, leaned to Joyce and kissed her. 

So genuinely surprised was she at the action, that 
for a measurable pause she sat rigid, then, in a 
lightning reaction of fury, jumped, with an out¬ 
raged “Oh!” to her feet so impetuously that she 
forgot the hampering curtain in the folds of which 
she was still festooned, until it almost jerked her 
back into her seat. Her movement, thus handi¬ 
capped, lacked its proper dignity, and, to an on¬ 
looker, might indeed have presented a comic aspect, 
but to her the sudden jar brought only an increased 
sense of indignation. She petulantly loosed the 
restricting garment and fled down the corridor, leav¬ 
ing behind her a bewildered and incoherently pro¬ 
testing partner. 

It was not until the ball-room was reached that she 
was capable of savouring to the full her sense of 
humiliation. Once back in the glaring publicity of 
the carnival she pondered what had happened. Her 
consciousness of married sobriety was rasped and 



An Unknown Quantity 257 

wounded. Every prejudice of decency rallied to her 
in arms, and no sense of humour came to reproach 
her with inconsistence. She had thought nothing of 
Evelyn’s far more impassioned love-making when 
she was, for all social intents and purposes, engaged 
to George. Acceptance then had been within the 
pale of her code. Nor did it occur to her that 
Jimmy’s exploit was evidence of nothing worse than 
the inconsequence of high spirits. It left her with 
an intolerable feeling of outrage, reminded of her 
social insecurity, persuaded that he had taken ad¬ 
vantage of her ‘‘position” with a cynicism he would 
not have dared to display to anybody else. At the 
same time, and somewhat illogically, she felt that it 
was all “one” with the horrible habits of Chelsea, 
habits which she had no desire to share or to under¬ 
stand. The interests of the last few weeks, cul¬ 
minating in the excitement of the ball, had deadened 
her memory of that miserable evening in Swan Walk, 
but now all the suppressed antagonisms that had, 
as its result, been wakened in her, rushed back with 
redoubled strength. She had always known—so she 
told herself—^how it would be with those dreadful 
people, and now Evelyn should see for himself. He 
had laughed at her, but now he would have to recog¬ 
nise how right she had been. Not even a glimpse of 
the miserably repentant, sadly puzzled Jinmiy, still 
on his sofa, would have softened her indignation, for 
at that moment he stood to her for a sjunbol of all 
that she had been forced into accepting against her 
will, all the side of her husband’s life that she found 
incomprehensible and repellent. 

She walked slowly round the hall. Where was 
Evelyn? A sense of being lost, a feeling of fear, was 


258 An Unknown Quantity 

added now to her mood of angry disgust. How, in 
this Bedlam of noise and strange faces, could she 
hope to find anyone she knew? Against a growing 
sense of terror she fought by returning to the con¬ 
sideration of her shocked propriety. She must assert 
herself, show that she could take a place where such 
insults could not reach her. She w’ould make these 
friends of his see that she was not a poor girl who 
would stand anything. It was as though the various 
threads of determination which she had vaguely 
touched and fingered since her marriage, were now 
caught up by Fate, drawn together in her waiting 
hand. 

She had stopped in her walk and was gazing, 
plunged deep in reflection, with blank, unseeing eyes 
at the dancers. 

A voice behind and slightly above her brought her 
back with a start to full consciousness of her sur¬ 
roundings, a voice that said: 

‘‘Why, iFs Joyce!’’ 

She looked up and, for a moment, did not recog¬ 
nise the face that smiled at her from behind the low 
barrier, as that of her sister-in-law Kachel Birk. 
Only for a moment, however, was she puzzled, for it 
was Kachel, kindlier than she remembered, welcom¬ 
ing, resplendent in a golden turban and blue, airy 
chiffons, speaking to her from the opulent aloofness 
of one of those very boxes she had, such ages ago it 
seemed, envied hopelessly from afar. 

“My dear child, what on earth are you doing all 
alone! ’ ’ 

“I’m looking for Evelyn.” 

“You would be 1 It seems to me that it ought to be 
Evelyn who should be looking for you! It’s about 


An Unknown Quantity 259 

time you began to teach him a lesson, so suppose you 
come in here and make yourself reasonably com¬ 
fortable until your lord and master condescends to 
find you!’’ 

“Oh, but I’ve been dancing with one of his 
friends. Evelyn didn’t leave me!” 

“My dear, for Heaven’s sake don’t thinly that I’m 
making covert attacks on your loyalty! Come along 
at once and stop being foolish.” 

Joyce needed no further persuading. To find 
friends where she had begun to think she should 
never again see a face she knew, was too delightful 
an experience to be sacrificed from shyness. And 
then, to be herself in a box-! 

“You can sit on one of these chairs in front,” 
Kachel continued, “so that your precious husband’ll 
be bound to see you. You’d be worn out in that 
crowd long before you found him.” 

“May I really come!” Joyce even now could 
barely credit her good fortune. 

Kachel moved the chair at her side invitingly for¬ 
ward. “Don’t be a goose, my dear,” she said; 
‘ ‘ come along at once! ’ ’ 


III 

When Joyce, in the arms and beneath the feet of 
Jimmy, was whirled into that mad dance the result 
of which has already been recorded, her husband 
continued alone his exploration of the company. So 
absorbed had he been hitherto in the business of in¬ 
troducing his wife to the novelty and excitement of 
the scene, that he had found no opportunity to seek 



26 o 


An Unknown Quantity 

out the friends who must, he knew, be scattered about 
the room. As soon, therefore, as he was left alone 
he set himself to enjoy his unexpected liberty. 

An hour slipped away in the pleasant pursuit of 
casual recognitions. He found, as he knew he would, 
a constant supply of acquaintances in the endless 
flow of masqueraders, and it never occurred to him 
to reflect upon the swift passage of the time until the 
sudden vision of Jimmy gallivanting with a girl, 
quite obviously not Joyce, forced him, with some¬ 
thing of a shock, to wonder what, after all, his wife 
was doing. With the intention of inquiring from 
her late partner where exactly she might be found, 
he made a move towards him, but, the music at the 
moment ceasing, was involved swiftly in a maze of 
couples, with nothing to guide him but the distant 
flapping of a torn and displaced window curtain. In 
pursuit of this he followed, and in a moment or two 
discovered the wearer reclined upon the floor with 
Stephen Langley and ‘‘Bunny’’ Cobbold in close at¬ 
tendance. The sight of them drove, for the moment, 
all memory of his immediate object from his mind. 

“Hullo, Stephen!” he said, “where on earth have 
you been? I haven’t caught a glimpse of you all 
evening.” 

“Bunny” anticipated her companion’s reply. 

“Oh, we saw you/^ she nonchalantly remarked, 
“but really you looked so much the complete ‘gent’ 
that we didn’t dare introduce ourselves!” 

Evelyn glanced down at his clothes with an em¬ 
barrassed laugh. ‘ ‘ Oh, these! ” he said; “ Joyce was 
keen for me to dress up, you know. By the way, that 
reminds me, where-” 

“You’ve no idea what a pair you look,” “Bunny” 



An Unknown Quantity 261 

broke in on her sonrest note. ^‘Stephen and I 
laughed till we nearly bust ourselves! You^re ex¬ 
actly like a photograph of a mid-Victorian bridal 
pair in a seaside lodging-house!^’ 

Jimmy, loyal to his ideal of communal solidarity 
and forgetful, in his devotion to the cause, of his own 
recent discomfiture, attempted to dissipate the grow¬ 
ing awkwardness. 

‘‘I say!” he protested, think Joyce is looking 
topping!” 

She glanced at him scornfully. 

“Well, you ought to know, at any rate!” she re¬ 
torted. Jimmy had not been reticent, and she knew 
already the details of his rebuff. 

Evelyn was mystified at her obvious ill-humour. 
Seeking some reason for it in his own conduct, he 
could find none. 

“Where’s the rest of the party!” he asked. 

“What rest!” 

“I thought the whole crowd of us was coming!” 
He turned interrogatively to Stephen. 

“Agatha was here,” the poet replied, “but I 
rather think she went home about half-past one. ’ ’ 

“Half-past one! Why, I’d no idea it was so late. 
Isn’t Liell here!” 

“No, he wouldn’t come.” 

“Can you see Liell at a show like this!” inter¬ 
posed “Bunny”; “the mere sight of so many people 
enjoying themselves would probably kill him with a 
surfeit of bile! No, mon vieux, we’re the whole 
bloody party!” 

“Well, then, let’s go upstairs and get a snack of 
something to eat. I’ll go and find Joyce and we’ll 
meet in the gallery.” 


262 An Unknown Quantity 

shall be dam’ surprised if we do! Your wife’d' 
have to like us a good deal more than I think she 
does to forsake the champagne of the aristocracy for 
a stand-up sandwich in my company! ’ ’ 

‘‘Champagne! What do you mean?” 

“Perhaps I’m being indiscreet, you must forgive 
me if I am, I didn’t know she’d given you the slip!” 

Evelyn turned to Jimmy. “I thought Joyce was 
with you?” 

“Oh, that was ages ago! I haven’t seen her for 
at least an hour!” 

“You say you saw Joyce drinking champagne?” 
He looked hard at “Bunny,” as though to discover 
whether she had been making fun of him. Nothing, 
however, in the expression of her sullen face sup¬ 
ported the assumption. 

“I won’t go as far as that, but there was certainly 
champagne in the box.” 

“In the box? Was she in a box?” He was 
frankly bewildered. 

“Of course she was, oh, and with the elite! I 
didn’t recognise all of them, but Dowsing was there, 
and Parkinson, and a woman half strangled in dia¬ 
monds. I assure you I’d no idea you moved in such 
exalted circles, still less that your wife had given 
you the entree! ’ ’ 

Evelyn ignored the studied insolence of the re¬ 
mark. 

“Which box was it?” he asked. 

“Really, I wasn’t sufficiently interested to notice, 
I’m afraid, but it was somewhere over there.” She 
pointed lazily across the hall. 

With a muttered “Thanks” Evelyn turned on his 
heel and walked away. 


An Unknown Quantity 263 

As soon as he was out of hearing ‘‘Bunny’s^’ 
pent-np anger burst into flame. 

‘‘God in Heavenshe exclaimed, “I used to 
think that he’d got guts! It makes me sick to see 
him running about after that little minx!” 

Langley got up wearily from the floor. 

“Don’t be a cat, Bunny,” he said. 

“Well, you don’t expect me to feel particularly 
charitable towards a wretched little whipper-snap¬ 
per who takes my friends away from me, do you?” 

Jimmy protested faintly: “Oh, I say!” he began, 
“hang it all, she is his wife!” 

His voice sounded curiously like the bleat of a 
kindly sheep sheltering from a sudden storm. 

“Bunny” was not to be placated. “What beats 
me,” she said, “is what induced him to marry her. 
You at least have got more sense than that,” she 
added to Stephen. “She’s ruining him and she’ll 
ruin his work, you see if she doesn’t. I wish to God 
he’d picked up some damned woman off the streets 
or else gone off with a dowager, one’d know where 
one was then! As it is, he might as well have mar¬ 
ried a nursery governess! She’s just as bad, with 
all her little suburban fancies and prejudices. How 
can she do anything but spoil him ? and there he goes 
without the sense to see it! Christ! it makes me 
wild. Come along and let’s get something to drink, 
and then I’m going home. Jimmy, I don’t think 

much of your blasted beano!” 

* * * * # 

The emotion of which Evelyn was chiefly con¬ 
scious as he crossed the hall was curiosity. What 
possible combination of circumstances, he wondered, 
could have laid siege so successfully to the fortress 


264 An Unknown Quantity 

of Joyce’s reserve, to have induced her to accept the 
advances of strangers. That they ivere strangers he 
didn’t for a second doubt. Dowsing? Bunny” had 
said so, and Parkinson? The imagined combination 
of his timid little wife with two such distressingly 
successful men brought a smile to his lips. Poor 
little thing, how frightened she must be! A moment 
later curiosity returned. Dowsing! who must make 
at least live thousand a year out of royalties alone, 
and Parkinson, whose prices for portraits staggered 
even his most determined sitters! That they, at¬ 
tracted by Joyce’s masked and subtle beauty, should 
invite her to join them he could understand, but 
that she of all people, she whom the gentle liberties 
of Chelsea studios frightened almost to tears, could 
bring herself to accept so unconventional an offer, 
remained, for him, an insoluble mystery. 

The explanation, when at length it was thrust 
before his eyes, was, of course, like so many ex¬ 
planations, transparently simple. He had reached 
the farther side of the room, and was moving slowly 
along the barrier, searching each party as he passed 
for some sign of his wife, when he became aware 
of a commanding figure in peacock draperies and 
crowned with a golden turban, beckoning to him 
from a box a few yards in front. For a moment 
he was puzzled, then, in a flash, he recognised his 
sister beneath the glittering disguise, and walked up 
to her. 

‘‘Hullo, Kachel,” he said, “I didn’t know you 
patronised this sort of thing. I’m looking for 
Joyce; as soon as I’ve found her I’ll come along and 
see you if I may.” 

She laughed back at him. 


An Unknown Quantity 265 

‘‘In that case, my dear, you can combine duty 
with pleasure—I leave you to decide which is which. 
Joyce is with us.’’ 

“With you?” 

“With us. Don’t look as thongh you’d been shot. 
I suppose I can entertain my own sister-in-law?” 

“But—but how on earth did she find you? She’d 
no idea you were coming.” 

“We found Jier!^^ Then to a physically expansive 
lady at her side—it Avas obviously to her that 
“Bunny” had referred as “half strangled in dia¬ 
monds”—she added, “the erring husband has re¬ 
turned, Susan.” 

The individual thus addressed raised a lorgnette 
to her eyes, and the action sent a ripple of light 
over the myriad facets of her corsage. She stared 
hard at Evelyn, then— 

^'What do you say he is, dear?” she penetratingly 
whispered. 

Bachel Birk laughed. 

“Oh, he’s a rising, quite a rising, novelist, Susan, 
altogether in your line, I assure you!” 

A moment later she added to Evelyn, “Just fancy. 
Lady Dakin has never even heard of you! That 
fact alone should induce you to join us even if your 
wife weren’t here!” 


IV 

Despite the knowledge that his sister was laughing 
at him—he could always distinguish, without ever 
satisfactorily accounting for, the note of mockery 
in her voice when she spoke to him—Evelyn’s domi- 






266 An Unknown Quantity 

nant feeling as lie walked round to the entrance of 
the box was one of self-satisfaction. The emotion 
rode, it is true, upon a swell of less definite sen¬ 
sations, but it rode grandly. He was still faintly 
surprised at so unexpected a discovery of Joyce, 
but the surprise was no longer overpowering. 
Naturally Eachel had asked her to join them, and it 
must, presumably, have been a sudden panic of 
loneliness, breaking through Joyce’s habitual shy¬ 
ness, that had tempted her to accept. It had been 
kind of Rachel and sensible of Joyce, though by 
now, poor little thing, she would, of course, be 
looking anxiously for his rescuing presence to save 
her from the agonies of her own gaucheries. He 
could fancy, clearly enough, the timid welcome of 
her eyes, the start towards him of her pathetically 
crumpled little body. A gentle self-reproach flowed 
deliciously into the stream of his consciousness, but 
it left his complacency unshaken. It had been 
thoughtless of him to leave her so long to her own 
devices, she must, indeed, have felt neglected, but 
now he would make up to her for the last hour’s 
discomfort, and she w^ould come to him as to a 
refuge. It would be pleasant to feel that in her eyes 
he would be undinuned against that background of 
what must seem to her rather a brilliant company. 
It would delight her to find him at his ease there. 
He smiled with pleasure to think that he could, at 
least, give quality to his role of rescuer. There 
flashed into his memory the picture of his own 
breakfast-table a few weeks earlier, the vision of a 
letter, his wife pouting and tearful. At the time 
he had felt no inclination to laugh, but now the 
recollection tempted him to prolong his smile. How 


An Unknown Quantity 267 

Heaven-sent was this opportunity! He would hear 
no more, after this terrifyingly cold plunge into 
social waters, of invitations from Kachel, no more, 
at least, of Joyce’s petulant longings to accept them. 
As he turned the handle of the door he found him¬ 
self investing his entry with an almost symbolic 
significance. 

He looked round but could not, for the moment, 
see his wife. In the middle of the box a small table 
stood, littered with the debris of supper. Beyond 
it and below, silhouetted against the glare of the 
hall, he could distinguish the tall, thin figure of his 
sister turned towards him, and at her side the 
quiescent mass of Lady Dakin. At one end of the 
abandoned table Freddie Birk lay back languidly 
in a chair smoking, with an air of resigned bore¬ 
dom, his long legs stretched towards the front of 
the box. He had all the appearance of a man 
waiting for his wife to go home, the resignation, 
too, of one who knows, from long experience, that 
she will not move until she has exhausted every 
possibility of enjoyment. For a second or two 
Evelyn saw nobody but these three, but as he took 
a step forward he was conscious of the backs of 
two men in the upper corner of the compartment, 
withdrawn and only dimly visible. He turned his 
head, and saw a flicker of shadowed white in the 
gloom. Ah! there was Joyce. He made a move¬ 
ment to the corner, his heart beating chivalrously 
as he thought of his embarrassed wife. A murmur 
of voices came to him and then a woman’s laugh, 
his wife’s laugh, an ‘‘enjoying” laugh. He stopped. 
For some obscure reason the sound displeased him. 
It was as though he had noticed in a picture some- 


268 An Unknown Quantity 

thing that ‘‘oughtn’t to be there,” some blemish of 
faulty perspective or composition that threw into 
wrong insistence the balance of the whole design. 
Through the operation of some ridiculous associa¬ 
tion of ideas that one sound had dissolved into sud¬ 
den flux all the certainty and the satisfaction of 
which, but a moment before, he had been so tri¬ 
umphantly conscious. The suspicion that Joyce 
might be enjoying herself, that his advent would not 
mean rescue, came to him, on the moment, with the 
full vigour of freshness. Until this moment the 
possibility had never glimmered, even faintly. 

He took another step towards the hidden figure 
of his wife, but as he did so Rachel’s voice sum¬ 
moned him. 

“Come down here, Evelyn, and talk to Lady 
Dakin.” 

He was not altogether sorry for the diversion. 
He had been shaken from his mood of self-satis¬ 
faction, and, for the moment, he was insecure in his 
role. He felt a sudden snobbish desire to show 
Joyce that he was “at home” with these people, 
that it was not solely for her that he had come. 

He squeezed his way past the table with a mut¬ 
tered greeting to his brother-in-law, who acknowl¬ 
edged it by a grunt, and stood expectantly before 
his sister, who, still smiling, presented him to her 
friend. 

“Here he is, Susan,” she said; “my lion’s not 
very big yet and you must make him roar”; with 
which embarrassing formula of introduction she 
turned away towards the group in the upper corner 
of the box. 

Seen at closer view, the constriction about Lady 


An Unknown Quantity 269 

Dakin’s neck was almost terrifying. Like the im¬ 
plement of some mediaeval torturer, the diamond- 
studded gorget circled her throat so closely that the 
flesh escaped, above and below, with a glad, almost 
breathless, gesture of relief. In general appearance 
she reminded Evelyn of a pink balloon tied at one 
end with string and then inflated, so that head and 
body showed, each in its due place and size, a tight 
distention. She was not tall and the luxurious con¬ 
tours of her form, hiding all sudden curves and 
angles, made it difficult for Evelyn to determine, at 
first sight, whether she sat or merely leaned. Only 
the hands reposing upon the glacis of her lap gave 
him the certainty of her being fixed securely in her 
chair. Her hair was grey, a fact that grieved her 
deeply, for she had always longed for it to be white 
with just that quality of ‘‘powder” that might have 
given the note of distinction to her appearance de¬ 
manded by her chosen pose. “With Avhite hair,” 
she had once said, ‘ ‘ one can hold a salon, with grey 
one is reduced to giving dinners.” Her face, too, 
much to her disgust, was kindly rather than dis¬ 
tinguished, though her eyes, more obedient than the 
rest of her body to conscious control, could, at times, 
pass from an expression of intelligence and friendly 
interest to a cold, impersonal stare that was vastly 
disconcerting to the timid. 

Some years previously Sir Eichard had left her, 
“more,” as Eachel had irreverently put it, “in 
sorrow than in anger,” for the certain repose of 
the grave, leaving her to exhaust his fortune as she 
had already exhausted him, in the entertainment 
and advertisement of those practitioners of the arts 


270 An Unknown Quantity 

who might he willing to accept her patronage in 
return for her hospitality. 

As her house was convenient, her dinners excel¬ 
lent, and her conversation sufficiently dashed with 
the sauce of gossip to pass for wit, there Avas no 
lack of these, and a woman less determined and less 
fortified by nature against physical strain, must 
early have collapsed beneath the demands of her 
self-imposed ambition, and followed her husband 
into the refuge of death. Her mind, however, was 
as securely cushioned as her body, and from the 
endless search for new celebrities she turned, always 
keen and tireless, to the entertainment and retention 
of the old. Tranquillity would have killed her, and 
the absence of novelty preyed on her like a fever. 

Her intimacy with the Birks, though to most of 
her friends inexplicable, was of long standing. 
Freddie, as a favourite nephew of her late hus¬ 
band’s, had come frequently to the house, where he 
had been the rock to which his despairing host had 
clung in the eddies of his Avife’s enthusiasms. His 
habit of dining with them each Aveek had survived 
his uncle’s death, and in the increasingly brilliant 
company of Lady Dakin’s widowhood he had taken 
'^upon himself so admirably the character of a foil, 
that she would have missed and even resented his 
absence from her parties. Besides, Eachel was a 
real godsend, so amusing, so daring, such a blessing, 
that, if for no other reason than as the husband of 
his wife, he must have been tolerated. 

For his part, Freddie, found the dinners too good 
to be lightly abandoned, and, little by little, he dis¬ 
covered, to his joy, that many at least of the celeb¬ 
rities Avith whom he was forced to associate could 


An Unknown Quantity 271 

meet him comfortably upon the common ground of 
golf. He found, with delight, that all the more really 
famous men who frequented Lady Dakin’s drawing¬ 
room shared with him an enthusiasm for the game, 
with the result that he came to the conclusion that 
they were ‘‘not such bad fellers” after all. He even 
formulated for himself a table of artistic precedence 
strictly concomitant with the prowess of the indi¬ 
vidual on the links. 

Upon Evelyn Lady Dakin now pounced with all 
the intensity of a bird of prey. Hachel, of course, 
was not always a “safe” guide, and, as her humour 
turned sometimes to the freakish, this brother of 
hers might be nothing more than—^her brother. At 
the same time, he might be a young man whom one 
ought to know; at any rate, he was a novelty. She 
struck, therefore, but with a preliminary “hover,” 
which took the form of greeting him at first with 
the full force of her impassive stare. 

Evelyn, in whose ears still echoed Joyce’s bewil- 
deringly, almost indecently, unexpected laugh, made 
a poor because an inattentive target, and, without 
betraying a sign of timidity, sat down. By acting 
thus he quite unconsciously made an impression, the 
immediate result of which was to soften the apprais¬ 
ing into the appreciative scrutiny. It was. Lady 
Dakin felt, in her “part” to frighten young men, 
and decidedly in theirs—their cue, in fact—to claim 
eligibility by taking up the challenge. 

She rewarded this response, unintentional on his 
part, to the demands of dramatic fitness, with a 
smile, lowered her lorgnette and leaned slightly 
forward. 


272 An Unknown Quantity 

“I hear your work highly spoken of, Mr. Rendle,” 
she said. 

Evelyn woke to attention with a start. For some 
reason he conld not at the moment analyse, the 
words left him with a sense of incompleteness. It 
was only later that he realised how infinitely more 
in keeping with the royal intonation he would have 
found the plural pronoun. 

He stammered an acknowledgment. 

‘‘Dear Rachel has spoken a great deal about you,” 
she continued, “and it is a pleasure for me to meet 
you, especially after making the acquaintance of 
your charming wife.” She paused, and after a 
moment added, as though something more were ex¬ 
pected of her, “So few writers nowadays have 
tolerable wives!” 

To find himself dependent upon Joyce for ac¬ 
ceptance was an experience so utterly abnormal 
that, for a while, he could make no reply. With his 
entrance into the box the accustomed world seemed 
to have swung slightly otf its axis. 

“It was very kind of Rachel to ask her to join 
you,” he managed to ejaculate. 

“Fiddlesticks! Rachel is lucky to have an at¬ 
tractive sister-in-law who will come when she’s 
asked.” She turned her head and raised her lor¬ 
gnette for a renewed contemplation of the dancers. 
“Why didn’t you bring her here sooner?” she 
asked; “we might never have seen her at all in such 
a crowd.” 

“I’d no idea Rachel was going to be here.” 

She ignored his reply. 

“It’s almost impossible to recognise any of the 
people one wants to recognise.” 


An Unknown Quantity 273 

She renewed her careful study of the hall with the 
air of a fisherman who seeks the particular pool of 
the most desirable fish before casting his fly. 

“IVe no doubt/^ she continued, ‘‘that a great 
many of them don’t want to be recognised.” 

He said nothing, and she flashed at him an im¬ 
patient glance as though she were pondering the 
advisability of throwing this particular “catch” 
back into the stream. 

A silence fell between them and had already 
reached a degree of embarrassing intensity when a 
sudden burst of laughter turned the attention of both 
to the other occupants of the box. The group by 
the door had broken up and Evelyn was conscious 
of Joyce, flushed with excitement, at his side. 

“Oh, Evelyn,” she said, “isn’t it lovely, Mr. 
Parkinson wants to paint my portrait!” 

The eminent portraitist accentuated, in gentle 
courtesy, his permanent stoop, which, in combination 
with sad eyes drooping at the corners, and a beard 
that hid his collar, gave, at a casual meeting, the 
impression that he was either in permanent mourn¬ 
ing for the departed brilliance of his youth, or 
weighed down by the burden of honours unexpected 
and undesired. 

“With, of course, your husband’s permission, and 
entirely for my own pleasure,” he murmured in 
tones that seemed to deprecate even the vaguest ref¬ 
erence to the theory of marital obedience and the 
existence of market prices. To the conviction that 
the younger generation was intolerable was added, 
in his heart of hearts, a suspicion that the older 
one was subtly ridiculous, with the result that his 
attempts to shame new liberties by means of a 


274 An Unknown Quantity 

meticulous observance of old conventions, lacked the 
decision that might have given it a certain force. 

Evelyn, still too surprised at the general trend 
of the situation to talk intelligibly, murmured his 
acknowledgments. Eachel was quick to observe his 
embarrassment. 

‘‘You’re not very gracious, my dear boy,” she 
said, “but then, perhaps, Mr. Parkinson, it would 
have been more tactful of you to offer immortality 
to the talents of the husband rather than to the 
charms of the wife!” 

Mr. Dowsing moved gently out of the shadows 
and coughed in the manner of one about to give the 
coup de grace to a tiresomely debated point. 

“The claims of beauty are surely paramount!” 
he said in the manner, elaborated by long intimacy 
with actors, of a “star” performer taking up an 
expected cue. As though consciously to stress the 
effect he moved across to the front of the box with 
a perfect theatric “sense” of his audience. 

“Dear Lady Dakin!” he continued with a hint 
of mockery in his voice, “surely to-night you have 
surpassed yourself, beauty and talent hand in hand 
to pay you homage!” 

The enthroned patroness of the arts shrugged her 
shoulders impatiently. 

“Keally, Clement,” she retorted, “sometimes I 
wonder why I don’t smack you!” 

She spoke sharply, but the expression in her eyes 
was half pleased, half cynical, and wholly indulgent. 
She looked at Dowsing as one might look at a pet 
dog meriting correction. 

The distinguished playwright raised hands and 
eyes in pretended horror. 


An Unknown Quantity 275 

“Ah, now yon are being harsh with me!” he ex- 
claimed: ‘‘did I deserve it?’’ and he turned sud¬ 
denly to where Evelyn, who had risen from his chair 
to make room for him, was standing half in shadow. 

“But I forget,” he went on irrepressibly and 
without the slightest change of tone, “I must in¬ 
troduce myself. My name is Dowsing. You I know 
so well on paper that it gives me double pleasure 
to meet you in the flesh. I found your last book 
quite wonderful.” 

Evelyn was uncertain, for the moment, whether 
to be amused at the absurdity of the man or pleased 
at the compliment. On the whole the latter con¬ 
sideration weighed most with him. Whatever one 
might think of the fellow’s atfectations it could not 
be denied that he had a position, a reputation. An 
uncomfortable sense of what some of his Chelsea 
friends would say of Clement Dowsing served to 
temper his satisfaction, but he put the misgiving 
from him. 

Before he could make any reply Dowsing had 
spun, once more, gaily, into the very centre of a 
malestrom of talk. With lightning speed he changed 
from topic to topic, barely pausing to make the trans¬ 
itions. He turned now again to Lady Dakin. 

“The prose of our days infects me,” he said. “In 
a fresher age I could have overwhelmed you with 
conceits, comparisons. Why should you not be 
Gloriana to me, or the Faery Queen? You would 
say that I flattered you? Well, the charge would 
be true, but at least the flattery would have style! 
whereas now, if I use the high manner of hyperbole 
you say merely that you want to smack me! Would 
that the wish were real, there may be a romance 


276 An Unknown Quantity 

in a smack!—as it is yon only say yon do!—ah, la 
la!—prose within ns, prose all ronnd ns. Look at 
the spectacle here! A roomfnl of self-conscions 
revellers’ jonrnalese tonched with rhetoric to pass 
mnster as ecstasy, convention in half masks to ape 
abandon-” 

His flow was snddenly interrnpted by a delightfnl 
cry from Joyce. 

‘^Oh, look!” she cried, “isn’t it lovely!” As 
thongh at some snpreme word of command the 
snrging mass of dancers had swept forward to the 
middle of the vast floor, faces tnrned to the dome, 
arms stretched like a forest, npwards. There was a 
moment of almost complete silence while, from 
enormons, snspended baskets, dropped hnge bal¬ 
loons, red, green, bine, and yellow, floating disdain- 
fnlly down to the grabbing hands. As they came 
within reach, the waiting crowd below broke into 
movement like w^ater fiercely, strangely stirred. A 
Bedlam of noise broke out, shonts, laughter, singing. 
The movement grew snddenly more intense, men and 
women fell on the slippery floor and were trampled 
by hysterical neighbonrs fighting for the eddying 
trophies with the wild enthnsiasm of fanatics. There 
was something terrifying about the madness of five 
thonsand dancers straggling almost mnrderonsly for 
a few toys. 

At the sonnd of Jo^^ce’s cry Dowsing tnrned to¬ 
wards her. 

“At least yon shall see a fine gestnre!” he 
langhed, “I shall dare the lions for yon!” 

With the deliberation of pose that marked his 
every action, he vanlted over the barrier on to the 
floor. Against the motley wall of revellers his fig- 



277 


An Unknown Quantity 

ure in evening dress looked strangely conspicuous. 
For a moment he was hidden from view, but a 
few seconds later the occupants of the box could see 
him coming towards them, completely unruffled, 
holding by a long string a gigantic blue balloon that 
sailed in his wake safe above the snatching hands. 
Through the crowd he came with the certainty and 
swerving elegance of a rugby ‘‘three-quarter’’ in 
the thick of his opponents’ defence, and with a bow 
brought his booty to the safe haven from which he 
had set out. Very gravely he handed the absurd toy 
to Joyce. 

“My tribute to beauty!” he said, “and my chal¬ 
lenge to the age.” 

Rachel Birk laughed. 

“Well done,” she remarked, “I feel somehow that 
we ought to clap, but there’s no curtain to come 
down, and it might be rather an anticlimax!” 

Lady Dakin smiled. 

“You’ve some very pretty tricks, Clement,” she 
said; then to Joyce, as though Dowsing’s interlude 
in her favour had somehow set upon both her and 
her husband the seal of acceptance: 

“You must both of you dine with me soon.” 

Joyce, still flushed with the consciousness of hav¬ 
ing been, for a while, the center of so distinguished 
a gathering, smiled back with a sudden absence of 
shyness. 

“That would be nice!” she said. 

“ I’ve got a small party on Monday week, perhaps 
you would come then?” 

“We should love to, shouldn’t we, Evelyn?” 

In the quick glance that she threw at her hus¬ 
band there was a hint of triumph. 


278 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘It’s very kind of Lady Dakin,” he replied. 
Eachel took her brother’s arm. 

“Eeally, my dear,” she said, “if yon go to Susan 
you can’t go on refusing my little attempts at 
hospitality. You must come to us next.” 

Again it was Joyce who answered. 

“We should love it!” 

Eachel glanced at her shrewdly. 

“I really believe you would,” she said. 


i 


THE FOURTEENTH CHAPTER 


I 

T T was with a sense of wandering unexpectedly in 
strange by-ways that Evelyn, during the next 
few days, contemplated the spectacle of his wife’s 
glittering happiness. Of course, as he repeatedly 
told himself, it was precisely this that he had in¬ 
tended, but the assurance was made with a wry 
smile and a feeling that the success of his manoeuvre 
had been, subtly and mysteriously, almost too com¬ 
plete. He had planned to make of the ball a 
diversion from the chaos of new experiences into 
which Joyce had been thrown, but he could not help 
feeling that in the scheme as he had visualised it 
his own part was to have been more spectacular. 
The wonders of the evening should have been seen 
by his wife primarily, he held, through t!ie medium 
of his personality, and in him she should have be¬ 
held the supreme magician who had conjured them 
into being, who could at will repeat the trick. Only 
now, after the unexpected denouement, did he see 
clearly this vision of himself as the projected 
centre of his carefully arranged ‘‘group.” The pic¬ 
ture had been taken, but the camera had got, in¬ 
explicably, out of focus, and the very falsity of the 
result showed him, as nothing else would have done, 
the balance, now so completely upset, of the compo- 

279 


28 o An Unknown Quantity 

sition he had originally designed. The vague in¬ 
tention of rescue with which he had entered his 
sister’s box had not, he now realised, been assumed 
merely to meet the demands of an unforeseen inci¬ 
dent, but was fundamental in his whole conception 
of the plan. The surprise that had overwhelmed 
him on the occasion of that memorable entry, when 
he had been compelled to face a set of utterly un¬ 
expected circumstances, was with him still, nor had 
subsequent reflection done anything to modify the 
sensation of shock. That Joyce should have pleased 
his sister and her friends he could understand. He 
was shrewd enough to see that her prettiness and 
simplicity, even the timidity that must, at first, have 
held her tongue-tied, were enough to arm her dan¬ 
gerously with allurements. There was nothing, 
after all, ^^conspicuous” about her. Her voice was 
naturally soft, and her native quickness of per¬ 
ception aided by his own loving watchfulness had, 
long ago, succeeded in steering her with comparative 
safety among the more obvious shoals of social in¬ 
tercourse. Besides, what did Eachel’s friends know 
of her? What, if it came to that, did Rachel know? 
He had never, not even to his mother, confessed the 
full story of their meeting, never revealed the com¬ 
plete background of her life. To his family she was 
just an ‘^obscure little person” whom, perversely, 
he had chosen and offered with a challenge rather 
than a prayer for their acceptance. She must, he 
felt, with a quick thrill of pleasure and affection, 
have given an impression of shyness and demure¬ 
ness irresistibly attractive. Even Lady Dakin had 
not been unmoved, for hadn’t she described his wife, 
at least by implication, as “tolerable,” an adjective 


An Unknown Quantity 281 

that in her mouth could mean nothing, surely, but 
a willingness to listen and admire? No, it was not 
the indubitable fact that Joyce had been, once again, 
accepted^’ that overwhelmed him, but the com¬ 
panion fact, so miraculously insistent, that she her¬ 
self had quite simply accepted the new, frightening 
experience. That she had not, for a single moment, 
after his arrival in EachePs box, regarded him as 
a champion, he could not deny. Positively she had 
revelled in a situation that ought to have been, 
however it might be modified by the tremulous sen¬ 
sations of adventure, undoubtedly embarrassing. 
That she had so revelled was clear, and the pleasure 
of the incident had not, it seemed, lessened in re¬ 
trospect, but had kept her, since the ball, in a state 
of quite extraordinary elation. It never occurred 
to him that the mere fact of being treated by such 
people as ‘‘one of themselves’’ must have been an 
unbelievable delight, that the attentions of an emi¬ 
nent playwright and a famous Academician were 
tribute with which nothing in his offered Bohemian- 
ism could compare. For the first time since her 
marriage she had been regarded as an individual 
with charms and allurements, with claims on atten¬ 
tion, distinct from those of her husband: she had 
been given an importance underived from him, an 
importance that actually, in this case, he did not 
share. She had had one magic glimpse of a life 
that, a year ago, was unbelievably remote, a life that, 
by her marriage, she had dimly thought to touch, 
only to find, until the accident of that memorable 
night, that it was as far from her as ever. 

Not for a moment did she feel that her enjoyment 
of the experience involved her in the slightest dis- 


282 An Unknown Quantity 

loyalty to her husband. Wasn’t Mr. Dowsing a 
writer just as Evelyn was? Hadn’t Mr. Parkinson 
attained a position of respect and glory as a painter, 
and mustn’t he therefore be a better painter than 
that poor, shabby, awkward Mr. McLennan? How, 
otherwise, could he have been acclaimed and en¬ 
throned by the Eoyal Academy? 

From this starting-point her thoughts moved 
quickly forward. If ‘‘art” could do so much for 
others why should it not be pressed into Evelyn’s 
service as well? Here, surely, she could help: in 
the struggle for recognition she could at least show 
her excellent qualities as a wife. In the conscious¬ 
ness of so definite a mission, with, for the ultimate 
winning, so desirable a prize, she found a security 
and a sense of purpose which would henceforward 
colour with the subtlest gradations of tone her whole 
attitude to life, her relations with Evelyn, her con¬ 
ception of daily duty. 

Three days after the ball she found him at break¬ 
fast-time puzzling over a letter. As she entered the 
room he threw it across to her. 

“Keally, my dear, your friend Lady Dakin seems 
to be out of her senses,” he said; “/ never sent it 
to her.” 

Joyce glanced with a beating heart at the sheet of 
thick, grey paper. Its very “feel,” as of something 
massively and exclusively important, gave her a 
thrill of pleasure. 

“Dear Mr. Eendle,” wrote the patroness of 
literature,— 

“It was indeed kind of you to send me a copy 
of your book. I feel that I have hitherto deprived 


An Unknown Quantity 283 

myself of much real pleasure by my failure to make 
acquaintance with your work. I anticipate great 
hapiness in the perusal of ‘Lighted Windows.’ 

“I need hardly say how much I look forward to 
thanking you in person for your kind gift, and that 
I shall hasten to do so when you and your charming 
wife dine with me next Monday. 

“Believe me, 

“Yours very sincerely, 
“Susan Dakin. 


“Oh, what a nice letter!” 

“Perhaps, but why does she think I sent her my 
book?” 

“Evelyn dear, don’t be angry; 1 sent it.” 

“You?” 

“Kachel said it would be a splendid thing to get 
her to take an interest in you.” 

“So you sent it in my name?” 

“I had to say it came from you; it wouldn’t have 
been any good otherwise.” 

“Keally, Joyce, I do think you might have asked 
me first.” He tried to speak sternly, but the pro¬ 
test was made, in spite of his intention, with a half¬ 
smile. 

“But I knew if I did you wouldn’t let me!” 

“And you’d made up your mind to do it?” 

“ 1 6^0 so want you to be a success.” 

“And to make me one, or what you think is one, 
you’re willing to take sides with Kachel against 
me?” 

“Oh, Evelyn, how horrid of you! Rachel’s very 
fond of you, and it isn’t against you. Why won’t 
you ever let me do anything to help ? ’ ’ 


284 An Unknown Quantity 

A fleeting memory came to lier of just such 
another scene at just such another breakfast-table, 
when, as now, RachePs name had been the storm 
centre. This time, however, she would not give in 
so easily. She disdained now the crude employment 
of tears, finding in the promptings of intuition a 
subtler weapon. 

“They were all talking of your book the other 
night,she continued. 

“Including your wonderful Dowsing, I suppose?’^ 

“Oh yes. Tie was quite enthusiastic about it.’’ 

‘ ‘ That was exceedingly kind of him! ’ ’ 

^ ‘ Evelyn. ’ ’ 

“WelD” 

‘ ‘ I don’t think I like Mr. Dowsing very much, he’s 
such a funny little man.” 

“I never supposed you would, but I wondered how 
long you’d take to find it out for yourself.” 

His wife’s admission gave back to him the con¬ 
sciousness of assurance that, for the moment, he had 
lost. As he smiled at her he felt a sudden rebirth 
of the old sense of protection. 

She smiled back at him. 

“But he might be useful, mightn’t he, Evelyn?” 

“Dearest goose! what absurd words you get hold 
of: useful for what?” 

“I mean he’s a great friend of Lady Dakin’s, isn’t 
he? And he is successful.” 

“Horribly successful and dreadfully vulgar: 
everything in fact that I abominate, you ridiculous 
little plotter!” 

He walked over behind her chair and, bending, 
kissed her shoulder. ‘ ‘ What a complete little woman 


An Unknown Quantity 285 

you are with your silences, and your secrets, and 
your calculations!’’ 

She looked up at him with loving seriousness. 
‘‘It’s because I do so want to be a help.” 

“Just be yourself,” he replied, “that helps more 
than anything.” 

“Wives ought to, you know.” 

“I shan’t be much of a credit to you, my darling. 
You’ll never make me into a Clement Dowsing!” 

She drew her brows into a little frown. 

“Oh, of course not, Evelyn!” she said. 
***** 

Later in the morning she went to him in his 
study. 

“You’re not really angry with me about sending 
the book, are you?” she pleaded. 

‘ ‘ Of course I’m not angry, you baby! Since we’ve 
got to dine with the old idol it’s just as well, I 
suppose, to be in her good books. But you mustn’t 
play any more tricks behind my back, you know: 
I might be very angry next time.” 

“Oh, Evelyn, I won’t, really I won’t, if you don’t 
want me to!” 

Even while he was speaking he was conscious of 
being vaguely surprised at his own easy acceptance 
of the situation. He had fully recognised the im¬ 
plied flattery of Lady Dakin’s letter, but though he 
comforted himself with the thought that he “saw 
through” it, he could not altogether dispel an un¬ 
derlying feeling of pleasure. The sight, too, of 
Joyce so seriously engaged in the task of “helping” 
him seemed to him a matter for happy, self-assured 
laughter. He felt in his own person, remote from it. 


286 An Unknown Quantity 

as thougli some one not himself were its object, and 
he smiled at her caressingly, sentimentally, as one 
smiles at the gamboling of a puppy. 

‘‘Oh, and Evelyn, IVe had a letter from Mr. 
Parkinson asking when I can begin sitting to him.’^ 

“Do you really want that silly old man to paint 
your portrait?’’ 

‘ ‘ Of course I do! he’s a dear, and—and it might 
be in the Academy; he said so himself.” 

“That’s what I feared!” 

“How funny you are, Evelyn! You laugh at Mr. 
Parkinson just as you do at Mr. Dowsing; do you 
always make fun of people just because they’re suc¬ 
cessful!” 

The shrewdness of the thrust made him feel sud¬ 
denly uncomfortable. He glanced at her, but the 
frank innocence of her eyes disarmed him. 

“My dear, you don’t understand,” he said. 

“But I do want to, Evelyn.” 

“It isn’t a thing I can explain in a moment.” He 
tapped with his foot impatiently. “One has to find 
out these things for oneself.” 

“Can’t one ever be successful if one’s a good 
artist!” 

“Of course one can! What a silly question!” 

“Mr. McLennan and those friends of yours we 
meet aren’t very successful, are they!” 

“They have the success they want, the success 
they believe worth having.” 

“Are they really good artists!” 

“Some of them are.” 

She paused as though pondering his reply. At 
length she spoke. 

‘ ‘ I don’t like them, Evelyn, not really. ’ ’ 


An Unknown Quantity 287 

The recurrence of what he had begun to regard 
in her as a parrot cry annoyed him. 

“You mustn’t say things like that, Joyce, or you’ll 
make me angry. You don’t know anything about 
them, how can you say you dislike them?” 

She flared up at the rebuke. “I know a good deal 
about that Mr. McLennan that you don’t. You 
wouldn’t like him if you knew.” 

“What on earth do you mean?” 

“Only that he tried to kiss me at the ball; per¬ 
haps that’s nothing!” 

“Jimmy tried to kiss you?” 

“Yes, and I think it was horrid of him.” 

He looked at her flushed face in silence; then, 
leaning back, broke into uncontrollable laughter. 

“I can’t see it’s anything to laugh at!” 

“Oh, my dear, I can’t help thinking of Jimmy’s 
face when he found out that you thought it horrid!” 

“Well, wasn’t it? Do you want other men to 
kiss me?” 

“My dear, Jimmy kisses every woman he meets; 
he means no more by it than by offering them drinks 
in the studio.” 

“He isn’t going to kiss me, not in a hurry! Mr. 
Parkinson didn’t try to.” 

The vision, conjured up by her words, of the 
elderly Academician in an amorpus mood redoubled 
his mirth. 

Joyce stamped her foot: by this time she was 
really angry. “I suppose you wish he had! You 
don’t seem to mind who kisses me!” 

“Oh, my dear, don’t be so utterly absurd. Can’t 
you see that Jimmy’s Jimmy?” 


288 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘7 think he^s beastly, and—and I think you’re be¬ 
ing perfectly horrid!” 

With that she slammed out of the room. 

# * # * * 

As soon as she had left him Evelyn’s mirth sub¬ 
sided and he began to feel slightly ashamed of his 
behaviour. All day he brooded upon the morning’s 
incident, and in the evening he apologised. 

‘‘My dear, I was horrid this morning, and you 
were quite right. I’m sorry.” 

“You do really think it wasn’t nice of Mr. 
McLennan?” 

“Of course it wasn’t, but he didn’t think.” 

A moment later, “Am I forgiven?” he asked. 

She smiled her answer and he kissed her. 

“I can’t bear to see you angry,” he said. 

“I’m not a bit angry now.” 

He kissed her again. 

“And Evelyn-” 

“Well?” 

“You don’t mind about Mr. Parkinson painting 
my portrait?” 

“Oh, Joyce dear, how you do keep on! I suppose 
not, if you really want him to, though why you 
should I can’t imagine.” 

She drew his face to hers. 

“You are a dear!” she said. 

II 

The situation of Lady Dakin’s house in Shepherd 
Market was always, to her, a source of satisfaction. 
To proteges who, in the early stages of the artistic 
pilgrimage, still retained the prejudices of Bohemia, 



An Unknown Quantity 289 

she described it as being ‘‘Quite in a slum, you 
know,’’ an assertion which, if not proved, was at 
least not contradicted by the discreet W. on her 
notepaper. “After all, my dear,” as she had once 
confided to Rachel, “W. can mean anything.” She 
was accustomed, however, to soothe the susceptibili¬ 
ties of her more fashionable friends, as well as the 
snobbery of tradesmen, by the occasional addition, 
on the authority of the Telephone Directory, of the 
word “Mayfair,” and as she relied upon her own 
tact to decide when and to whom this further confi¬ 
dence might be made, no telephone number appeared 
upon her stationery. 

The instinct of a practised patroness, supported 
by gathered hints from Rachel, warned her that in 
the early stages of her acquaintance with Evelyn the 
further concession should not be attempted, and, as 
she welcomed him to her drawing-room, she prided 
herself upon her perspicacity. 

He had not as yet outgrown the belief that only 
the unconventional are admitted to the inner sanctu¬ 
ary of Art. His elegance at the Albert Hall had been 
exceptional, a departure from his usual habits, made 
to give pleasure to his wife. That occasion had, he 
felt, justified what was almost a betrayal of his con¬ 
victions, but the fact that he had betrayed them and 
incurred thereby the laughter of “Bunny” and her 
friends, strengthened his determination not to offend 
again. Joyce had ventured a gentle remonstrance, 
but he had remained firm. 

“I don’t want to dine with her,” he had said, 
“and if I must I’m not going under false colours. 
She must take me as she finds me; however I’m 
dressed I shan’t enjoy myself”: and he had gone off 


290 An Unknown Quantity 

sulkily to change into a tweed suit, a conspicuously 
soft shirt, and a black stock so exquisitely tied that 
he must have spent as long over its arrangement as 
he would have done had he consented to put on the 
dress suit that, as Joyce very well knew, he had long 
possessed. 

She had, at the time, attempted no further persua¬ 
sion, but his obstinacy had mystified her. It be¬ 
longed, she told herself, to all that ‘‘Chelsea” part 
of him that she could not understand. Her own life 
had been spent in the strict observance of conven¬ 
tions and instinct told her, as experience could not, 
that he was making himself purposely peculiar. If, 
in the old days, George Dendy had put on evening 
dress she would have viewed the action with distinct 
disapproval as one entirely unsuited to his position, 
and it was with a similar feeling that she now re¬ 
garded her husband ^s meticulous avoidance of the 
ordinary etiquette of his class. She said no more, 
however, postponing to some future occasion the 
further attack upon which she had determined, con¬ 
tent, for the moment, to show her disapproval by 
a deliberate exhibition of her own most elaborate 
frock. 

To his hostess the careful unconventionality of 
Evelyn’s clothes was far from disconcerting. They 
gave her a feeling that her hunting instincts had 
been right after all, that she was really on the scent 
of a young man who might repay the anxieties of 
the chase. She was quite ready to admit that when 
she had “done with him” he might offer a very dif¬ 
ferent appearance, but then the change would be due 
to her, and she would be able to rest in the sense of 
artistic achievement. 


291 


An Unknown Quantity 

She received him, therefore, with her warmest 
smile and a few words of commendation for his 
book, ‘‘which,’’ she said, “I have nearly finished, and 
find entrancing.” Joyce she welcomed kindly, but 
with a degree of empressement subtly lessened to 
point the difference, always accented in her house, 
between the husband and the wife. 

Two other guests were already present, standing 
with the silent awkwardness of those awaiting intro¬ 
duction. 

“Miss Pettiger,” said Lady Dakin, indicating 
with her smile a meek young person by the sofa, 
“and,” turning towards the fireplace, “Mr. Gril- 
stone.” “I am particularly anxious,” she added to 
Evelyn, “for you to know Mr. Grilstone,” and, with 
the words, she led him to the intimacy of the hearth¬ 
rug, abandoning Joyce to the giggling welcome of 
Miss Pettiger with an air of one who says, “There, 
my dear, I’ve done my best for you and now you 
must really amuse yourself with lier^ for I have more 
important things to do.” 

Women were, invariably, the weak points of Lady 
Dakin’s entertainments. Her own passion was for 
men, to whom, she flattered herself, she intellectually 
approximated. In order to observe the less trouble¬ 
some conventions, however, she made it a point of 
honour to mix the sexes at her parties, and drew 
from Heaven knows what depressing recesses of her 
social memory, a supply of surprisingly innocuous 
females with whom to paint a neutral background to 
the brilliant personages of her symposia. The range 
of her choice was uncomfortably limited, and when, 
therefore, a wife proved “tolerable” she was wel¬ 
comed with a sigh of relief. Gentle appreciation and 


292 An Unknown Quantity 

a retiring disposition were all that Lady Dakin de¬ 
manded in her female guests. Clever women she 
abominated, and rather than admit them to her 
house she would have completed her dinner lists 
from the books of the nearest agency for nursery 
governesses. Women, in her drawing-room, were 
expected to amuse themselves, and as soon, there¬ 
fore, as she had adroitly relegated Joyce and Miss 
Pettiger to the safe obscurity of the sofa, she felt 
that, so far as they were concerned, her duty had 
been done. She relied upon them to do theirs. 

Fate, in this, was kind to Joyce. Merely to dine 
with Lady Dakin was, for the present, excitement 
and glory enough. She was perfectly satisfied with 
a mouselike part for herself, perfectly happy to let 
Miss Pettiger giggle inanities and sigh superlatives, 
so long as, with eyes and ears wide open, she might 
absorb the wonders and novelties of this incom¬ 
parable corner of life. Had she been made conspicu¬ 
ous her inexperience might have been fatal. As it 
was she found in Shepherd Market a school in which, 
without ‘‘giving herself away,’’ she could learn, for 
future use elsewhere, so much that, though desirable, 
was still strange. 

“Of course, Mr. Gritstone,” said Lady Dakin, 
“you have read ‘Lighted Windows’?” 

Mr. Gritstone was a portly young man with scanty, 
fair hair, and the sad, sagging face of a melancholic 
bloodhound. From behind a gold pince-nez his eyes 
looked heavily as though they reproached the world 
for adding to his already intolerable burden of re¬ 
sponsibility. He was the editor and part proprietor 
of a large literary monthly and seemed to view his 


An Unknown Quantity 293 

duty to the British Public with the greatest possible 
concern. 

Before replying to Lady Dakin’s question he 
paused as though to weigh the probable effect for 
good or ill of his words. He appeared to consider 
that matters of the utmost importance depended 
upon his answer. At last, have very little time,” 
he said in slow, portentous tones, ‘Hor new fiction; 
but I will most certainly make a note of it,” which, 
in a small pocket-diary, he actually proceeded to do. 
‘‘Excuse me, but I did not quite catch your name! 
Ah yes, of course! ’ ’ and he added the requisite in¬ 
formation before replacing the book in his waistcoat 
pocket. 

Lady Dakin watched the process of Mr. Gril- 
stone’s laborious memorising with the air of an ex¬ 
acting school-mistress. “You certainly must find 
time for it,” she said in her most dictatorial voice, 
“I’m particularly anxious for you to read it.” Mr. 
Grilstone muttered “Ah yes, of course,” and gazed 
loweringly at Evelyn as though he suspected a trap 
the avoidance of which was a duty he owed to his 
subscribers. 

“That’s the editor of the Temple, you know,” 
whispered Miss Pettiger to Joyce: “don’t you think 
he looks most awfully clever! Oh, but of course I 
was forgetting that your husband is a writer. I al¬ 
ways think it must be so wonderful to be the wife of 
a writer!” she nervously laughed on a note of ex¬ 
clamation with apparent appreciation ot some ex¬ 
quisite humour concealed in her words. “He must 
be dreadfully clever too!” she added. 

Joyce smiled back at her. “ He is, ” she replied. 


294 An Unknown Quantity 

Miss Pettiger, whose idea of intelligent conversa¬ 
tion was to spin from her own and other people’s 
sentences an endless web of half admissions, queries, 
and implications, found so direct an acquiescence 
crippling to her powers. She stopped short in the 
middle of what was intended to be an appreciative 
giggle, opened her mouth, shut it again, and relapsed 
into a feverish search for new subjects of conversa¬ 
tion. 

‘‘I wonder who else is coming?” she said lightly, 
after a pause, ‘Hhere must be somebody else you 
know, we’re three women and only two men; dear 
Lady Dakin would never do a thing like that.” It 
was on the tip of Joyce’s tongue to inquire what 
particular sin ‘‘that” might be, when the opening 
of the drawing-room door and the announcement of 
Mr. Dowsing, by proving the correctness of Miss 
Pettiger’s assumption, absolved her from the neces¬ 
sity of explaining the intricacies of the social code 
upon which it was based. 

With the entrance of Mr. Clement Dowsing the 
atmosphere of the room underwent a subtle change. 
In a second the air of brooding heaviness that hangs 
invariably around expectant diners, vanished. 
Lady Dakin smiled. Miss Pettiger fluttered a de¬ 
lighted “Oh, it’s Mr. Dowsing, how nice!” and 
Joyce blushed as excitedly as a child at a pantomime 
on which the curtain has just risen. Mr. Gritstone, 
heaving a sigh, apparently of relief, took off his eye¬ 
glasses, polished them, and slipped them into his 
pocket, as though, with them, he were disposing, for 
the time being, of the whole weight of his appalling 
responsibilities. In short, Mr. Dowsing produced 
precisely the effect that he intended to produce. As 


An Unknown Quantity 295 

he stood for a moment in the open doorway he 
seemed sublimely conscious of being, for everybody 
present, the centre of interest. He had once again 
the air of a popular actor making a successful en¬ 
trance, or rather of a conductor with a strong ‘HeeP’ 
for the dramatic, waiting with poised baton to direct 
and master the massed orchestra attendant upon his 
will, and quite obviously aware of the slightest reac¬ 
tions and potentialities of his audience. 

As he watched him Evelyn was conscious once 
more—the experience had come to him in KachePs 
box at the Albert Hall—of a distinct feeling of an¬ 
tipathy, but with it of a tolerant amusement, almost 
of admiration for the man’s effrontery. He could 
have sworn that Dowsing felt the dislike that he 
roused in him, that he appraised it, handled it, and 
fitted it into the general composition of which he 
seemed to regard himself as the supreme designer. 
Clearly he meant to turn it to his own account, over¬ 
coming it if he felt inclined to take the trouble to do 
so, ignoring it if such treatment appeared more to 
his advantage. 

The pause during which Dowsing seemed thus to 
take stock of the company and gauge the possibilities 
of the situation, was a matter of only a few seconds. 
With outstretched hand he smilingly approached his 
hostess. 

“Dear Lady Dakin,” he said, “you have a way of 
working miracles! I had resigned myself to being 
late when, on a sudden, the sun and the moon stood 
still over the valley of Piccadilly in answer to my 
prayers!” he kissed her hand with an air. “Oh, I 
am late!” he continued, “I can see it in your face. 
To be quite truthful I hnew I was, but”—he smiled 



296 An Unknown Quantity 

round on the assembled company with an air of con¬ 
fidential intimacy—‘‘that charming sentence about 
the sun and moon came to me as I waited for my 
taxi and I couldn^t bring myself to cheat you of it!’’ 

The countenance of severity with which Lady 
Dakin had prepared to meet her dilatory guest 
melted into smiles. 

“Clement!” she protested, “nobody has any right 
to be so disarming; you deprive the hostess of her 
dearest privilege. Need I introduce you? I’m sure 
you will do it far better yourself.” 

He glanced round him. “Ah, Henry,” he said to 
Mr. Gritstone, “how are you? Your last number 
was deplorable but you are always yourself. AVhy, 
oh why don’t you ask me to contribute? Your avoid¬ 
ance of me is the crowning mistake of a career full 
of errors! Kendle, we certainly have met and”—as 
he caught sight of Joyce—“your charming wife, my 
Dea ex—Henry, what’s the Latin for balloon, 
though she wasn’t out of it at all but only at the 
end of its string! ’ ’ Still talking, he turned to Miss 
Pettiger: “What a chatterbox you must think me! 
Everybody does, but as you’re the only person here 
I’ve never met before, I can afford to appear in a 
bad light since first impressions are invariably false! 
Dear Lady Dakin, wonH you please rescue us both 
from a very embarrassing situation? Names once 
given are so important aren’t they? Thank you, 
thank you,” as his hostess sailed forward to make 
the introduction, “and now. Miss Pettiger, you have 
seen me at my worst and a great load is lifted from 
my mind.” 

It was part of Dowsing’s social strategy to per¬ 
suade his partner of the moment that he or she alone 


An Unknown Quantity 297 

had the power to interest him. A tendency to sen¬ 
timentality drove him also to single out in every 
room the obscure and the unpopular for at least a 
moment’s attention. The trait was a pleasant one, 
but he appraised it at exactly its right value, and 
relied upon it to win sympathy and applause where 
he could not get admiration. On this particular occa¬ 
sion instinct told him that before strangers a little 
display of this kind could do no harm, and that Miss 
Pettiger was, undoubtedly, its proper object. 

As he turned away she simmered with pleasure. 

‘Msn’t he a darling!^’ she murmured to Joyce, 
who was too intent upon keeping her own amusement 
within bounds to answer. As she watched him per¬ 
fectly at his ease, dominating the room, talking to 
everybody, she decided that he was really a very en¬ 
tertaining person. She had told Evelyn, there was 
no denying it, that she didn’t like him, and the state¬ 
ment had contained an element of truth, though it 
would have been more accurately expressed if she 
had said that she wasn’t sure whether she liked him 
or not. She did not exert herself to solve the problem, 
finding it sufficient, for the present, to be amused by 
him. She didn’t, of course, understand half of what 
he said, but she saw, instinctively, that he treated 
her with a certain deference, with a very decided 
‘^manner,” and the experience was new and delight¬ 
ful. He was so utterly different from anyone she 
had ever met before, and the very exaggerations and 
breaches of taste that exasperated so many people 
were exactly what, through inexperience, appealed to 
her. Of one thing she was certain: he was far nicer 
than any of Evelyn’s friends. Wasn’t he beautifully 
dressed? And hadn’t he perfectly lovely manners? 


298 An Unknown Quantity 

Both these attributes, she now remembered, her hus¬ 
band had already, after their first meeting in 
EachePs box, derided, by attaching to them the 
epithet ‘ ‘ foppish, ’ ’ but the qualification meant noth¬ 
ing to her. There was, for her, about Dowsing some¬ 
thing of the entrancing unreality of the stage. A^Tiat, 
to others, were atfectations, seemed to her, unprac¬ 
tised in the analysis of impressions, part of the 
glamour that had always hung, for her, about young 
men in musical comedy, the glossiness, ease, address, 
and good looks of the ideal jeune premier. Whether 
or no the type were desirable did not occur to her 
as a necessary question. The matter was so remote 
from her daily experience that, flung, momentarily, 
into its proximity, she was content to get pleasure 
from it as from a performance that was almost be¬ 
hind the foothghts. If she can be said to have 
brought her observations into any relation with her 
own life, it was, vaguely, to decide that, as all “ ar¬ 
tistic and ‘‘writing’’ people seemed to be “funny,” 
it was better to be so in the manner of Mr. Clement 
Dowsing than in that of James McLennan. 

In appearance he was still young, though in the 
matter of years he must have been approaching fifty. 
It was not until some time later, until, in fact, a few 
years before his death, that Nature, in sudden re¬ 
venge for a lifetime of self-indulgence, overwhelmed 
him with that disaster of corpulence mourned by the 
friends of his prime and, at the time of its visitation, 
so shamelessly welcomed by his enemies. Until he 
was close on fifty-five his figure retained the elegant 
suppleness that had for so long been the delight of 
his tailor, the despair of his disciples, and the scorn 
of his less successful competitors in the arts. His 


An Unknown Quantity 299 

dark hair gave no hint of grey nor yet of dye, and his 
vivid, clean-shaven face, tending to heaviness about 
the jaw, offered, by reason of its high colour, an im¬ 
pression of health that made his ultimate collapse, 
to those who had known him only as a social figure, 
all the more surprising. The timbre of his voice was 
pleasant but penetrating, and his enunciation, studi¬ 
ously elaborated, was reminiscent, as were his man¬ 
ners and his every gesture, of the theatre. From his 
clothes he was at pains to banish all trace of the 
artist, desiring, like Congreve, above all things, to 
be regarded as a man of the world rather than as a 
writer. 

At Lady Dakin’s table it was possible to see him 
at his best and at his worst. The charm which he in¬ 
variably exercised over all who did not set them¬ 
selves purposely to resist it, had long ago combined 
with the fact of her childlessness and the absence of 
all near relatives, to create for him there a position 
which should have belonged rightfully to a son of the 
house. At his touch the hardness of manner that 
she assumed in her general communion with the 
world vanished completely, and she allowed to his 
talkativeness and his conceit full license, content to 
respond with an air of almost doting fondness, that 
in a woman of less natural dignity might have 
seemed foolish and slightly embarrassing. She had 
grown to rely upon him chiefly to fill her house with 
interesting and successful people, and, when he was 
himself present at her parties, to galvanise her some¬ 
times lifeless exhibits to a show of activity. As a 
result, he was accustomed on such occasions to talk 
even more volubly and more inconsequently, than he 
did elsewhere, to set himself, ostentatiously, in “un- 


300 An Unknown Quantity 

dress’’ as though his shirt and trousers were more 
worthy of consideration than the state apparel of his 
contemporaries. The elfect was to achieve a certain 
air of intimacy and informality that, though it ag¬ 
gravated some almost past endurance, had the power 
of charming many and usually won every woman at 
the table to his side. 

On the occasion we are at present considering, the 
irritation, if any there was, did not show itself, and 
it says much for his natural charm that Evelyn, in¬ 
tent though he was on finding Lady Dakin’s enter¬ 
tainment intolerable, and the Dowsing ‘‘cult” 
abominable, could not refuse a smiling tolerance to 
a man whose colossal egotism seemed to claim sanc¬ 
tuary by reason of its very innocence. Even the 
portentous Grilstone seemed to feel that he could 
safely enjoy a few hours’ holiday from his duties and 
permit himself, now and again, a condescending re¬ 
sponse to the witticisms of so old a friend and so 
obvious a buffoon. 


Ill 

“My dear Henry,” Dowsing began as soon as din¬ 
ner was well started, “you spend so much of your 
time speaking from your Cathedral that I think you 
might, for once in a while, come right out of it and 
join us in a harmless little game of knucklebones on 
the steps. Wouldn’t you now,” to Joyce, who was 
his neighbour, “love to see a famous and very re¬ 
sponsible editor at play?” 

Grilstone spared her the necessity of replying. 

“If I do,” he answered with a ponderous attempt 


An Unknown Quantity 301 

at lightness, ^^may I too claim a concession from 
you?’’ 

‘ ‘ By all means, I should love to give you pleasure. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ That you, in your turn, will come inside ? ’ ’ 

‘‘And hear you preach? Oh, but my dear Henry, 
I should never take my hat off!” 

“Clement has no sense of reverence,” said Lady 
Dakin. 

“Dear lady, have you known me all these years 
and wronged me in your heart ? I am full to burst¬ 
ing of reverence.” 

“Oh, do let us hear what you reverence!” giggled 
Miss Pettiger, and relapsed into blushing silence as 
a result of her own daring. 

“I reverence,” rejoined Dowsing in tones of care¬ 
ful seriousness, “the might of the pen and the power 
of lies.” 

Miss Pettiger revived as a drooping flower at the 
touch of rain. 

“Isn’t he dreadful?” she whispered to Evelyn, 
who took no notice of her, but leaned across the table 
towards the object of her dread. 

“Have you no reverence for conviction, Mr. 
Dowsing?” he asked. 

“I have more respect for the will and the knowl¬ 
edge that can convince others.” 

“Sincerity, vision, simplicity, have no value for 
you?” 

“In the artist they are significant only in so far 
as they produce their effect. It is possible, I am told, 
to drive the propellers of a steamer at a very con¬ 
siderable number of revolutions to the minute, but 
after a certain speed has been reached the only re¬ 
sult of a further increase of power is to create a 


302 An Unknown Quantity 

vacuum in which the screw rotates with much noise 
but no perceptible result/’ 

‘‘Your criterion of all art is its effect upon the 
public!” 

“The desire to observe that criterion I regard, cer¬ 
tainly, as one of the marks of a professional as 
opposed to an amateur.” 

“Professionalism in art is the beginning of de¬ 
cadence,” Mr. Gritstone observed in measured tones. 

Dowsing turned to him with a smile. “Henry, re¬ 
member that we are in the portico, and if your ser¬ 
mons are to be as bad as that, let me tell you, I shall 
remain there indefinitely, even at the risk of ignoring 
my part of the bargain.” Turning again to Evelyn 
he resumed with an air of greater seriousness than 
he had hitherto displayed. “You know the ‘ Brothers 
Karamazov’?” 

“Of course.” 

“Then you will recollect the profound wisdom of 
the ‘Grand Inquisitor.’ The Church of Rome does 
not, presumably, regard professionalism as the ‘be¬ 
ginning of decadence’!” 

At mention of the Church Miss Pettiger sprang 
into momentary life. 

“What a dreadful cynic you are!” she exclaimed. 

“If cynicism means the study of my material, I 
plead guilty. The public that looks, and reads, and 
listens, is as much a part of the artist’s material as 
his paper and pens, his colours and his brushes.” 

Mr. Grilstone coughed the cough of a man who 
feels that his importance is insufficiently appreci¬ 
ated. 

“Your professionalism then, so far as I under¬ 
stand you, is intended to exert upon the public that 


An Unknown Quantity 303 

power of lying of which you have set yourself up as 
champion ? ’ ’ 

Dowsing leaned hack in his chair and laughed. 
‘‘Henry,’’ he said, “you are the only journalist I 
know who combines the use of an incisive logic with 
the ability to remember the stages of an argument!” 

Mr. Grilstone, who disliked, above all things, the 
title of “Journalist,” blew his nose and adjusted his 
eyeglasses. 

“That is no answer to my question!” he snapped. 

“My dear fellow, as the late lamented Mr. Oscar 
Wilde remarked with profound truth, all art is a 
lie.” 

“Poor Oscar!” murmured Lady Dakin inconse- 
quently, “he used to come here so often when my 
husband was alive.” 

“Then you would maintain,” queried Evelyn, 
“that the best artist is the best liarf ” 

“That depends entirely upon what you mean by 
the word ‘best.’ The supreme artist must be a su¬ 
preme liar, but he must have a lie supremely worth 
the telling. There are good professionals and bad. 
The amateur may believe fanatically in the value of 
his lie, but ignorance and an imperfectly disciplined 
conscience may keep him from knowing how to lie 
convincingly. The key to the whole mystery of the 
craft is, ‘study your public.’ ” 

“And give them what they want!” growled Mr. 
Grilstone, once again pocketing his glasses, as 
though with them he were putting away an argu¬ 
ment for which he had no further use; “the parrot- 
cry of the insincere!” 

‘ ‘ On the contrary, my dear Henry, give them what 
you want! With sufficient flattery, provided you 


304 


An Unknown Quantity 


have studied sufficiently the surprisingly simple con¬ 
struction of their mental insides, you can make them 
take anything. The mistake all you young men make, 
if you will excuse my saying so,’’ he continued to 
Evelyn, ‘‘is that you underestimate the necessity of 
success. You try to write your messages on a 
scribbled slate instead of going to the trouble of 
cleaning it first. The public will accept from suc¬ 
cessful men what they will ignore or deride when it 
comes from the failure or the obscure. The first es¬ 
sential for every young artist is to overcome the fear 
of making money. I conquered the distaste many 
years ago. I am successful, I am rich, and I am 
proud to admit both charges. Instead of grumbling 
at the crowd for being blind to my merits and leaving 
me to starve, I set myself to open, if not their eyes, 
at least their purses, convinced that once they had 
joined the conspiracy to set me up as an affluent spe¬ 
cialist they would crowd to consult me. They long 
to spend their money on somebody or something, 
why not, then, on me ? My dear Kendle, I, too, in my 
youth wrote serious, long-faced novels, though you 
may not believe it. They were good but nobody read 
them: they’re just as good still and everybody reads 
them. I don’t write any more novels now because I 
find that it means working more or less in the dark. 
I prefer the theatre where I can see my audience and 
gauge my effects. As a result of much careful ob¬ 
servation I came to the conclusion that plays of a 
certain kind were an admirable medium for what T 
had to say. In fact, I created a vogue and a public. 
Until you have tasted the delight of watching a 
crowded auditorium swallowing your pills night 
after night in the sincere belief that they are taking 


An Unknown Quantity 305 

nothing but spoonfuls of jam, you can’t know the 
true pleasure of the writer. Every artist works con¬ 
sciously or unconsciously for a public. Let us be sin¬ 
cere and own it. What greater glory than to make 
that public one’s own? You think I’m conceited; I 
am. You don’t believe that I can be serious, but 
that’s because, like Henry and most of the critics, 
you have failed to study my work. You think that 
what I am saying is paradoxical: it is, and I should 
hke to remind you that, according to the best dic¬ 
tionaries, the essence of a paradox is its truth. 

shall now stop talking for exactly two minutes 
in order to finish this excellent souffle before it gets 
quite cold.” 

‘‘Clement,” said Lady Dakin, “I cannot conceive 
how you have existed for so long without a wife. 
What do you do at night when you have nobody to 
talk to ? ” 

“I transfer my reflections to paper and call it 
writing. ’ ’ 

Miss Pettiger leaned across Jie table. “Isn’t 
your head in a whirl, Mrs. Kendle?” she asked. 
“Mine is.” 

This time no interruption came to save Joyce from 
the necessity of replying. 

“I think what Mr. Dowsing said was very inter¬ 
esting,” she remarked, a statement that, in so far as 
it bore upon his references to the money-making pos¬ 
sibilities of literature, was strictly true. 

Dowsing turned to her with a smile. “That is a 
charming reward for my balloon. I am called so 
many things, but scarcely ever ‘interesting.’ ” 

“Well, I know he made me feel as though my brain 
were upside down,” insisted Miss Pettiger. 


3 o6 An Unknown Quantity 

‘^That is his profession!’’ muttered Mr. Grrilstone. 

‘‘Take care, Henry, that I don’t trespass into 
yours!” Dowsing rejoined with a laugh. “Kemem- 
ber I’m coming into your Cathedral one of these 
days!” 

“I certainly shall be among the congregation,” 
said Lady Dakin. 

“Which? for I shall officiate at my own little side 
chapel, and I shall try to lure everybody away from 
Henry. He isn’t going to do all the preaching. Quite 
seriously, the Temple is to have a competitor, and, as 
the journalists say, ‘at no very distant date.’ ” 

“lYou are starting a paper?” Evelyn asked. 

“Yes, it is to be called the Heretic, I think,” he 
added, with a sly glance at Grilstone, “that I shall 
have a monthly column entitled ‘On the steps of the 
Temple,’ written entirely by myself.” 

“And is it to be as profoundly Machiavellian as 
your conversation?” queried Lady Dakin. 

‘ ‘ Oh, transparently so. I shall give my public ex¬ 
actly what I want; that is to say, precisely that par¬ 
ticular brand of the unexpected that they look for.” 

“And are there to be no other contributors?” 

“Dear me, yes. Like the evangelical sects of 
Christendom my heretics will wallow in blood, but 
it will be new blood, Henry, oceans of it! ” 

Miss Pettiger shuddered. “How horrid that 
sounds!” she said. 

Lady Dakin pushed back her chair and rose. 

“If you don’t mind,” she said, “we will have cof¬ 
fee upstairs.” 

Her habit of regarding women guests in her house 
as of merely secondary importance resulted in a cus¬ 
tom, with her invariable, of keeping the sexes to- 


An Unknown Quantity 307 

gether after dinner. On this particular occasion she 
otfered, contrary to her rule, an excuse. 

‘‘I’m expecting one or two people to drop in,” she 
said, “and it will be pleasanter in the drawing¬ 
room.” 

As they went upstairs she added over her shoulder 
to Joyce, ‘ ‘ There’s a funny little Mr. David coming, 
I hope; perhaps your husband knows him?” 

“We met him once at a party in Chelsea,” Joyce 
replied with a sinking heart. Were all her expecta¬ 
tions of splendour and refinement to be shattered at 
the last? Was this evening going to be but a repeti¬ 
tion, after all, of that other one of dreadful memory? 

“He sings delightfully, I’m told,” continued her 
hostess, “and I believe he has quite wonderful ideas 
about stage decoration. By the by, that should in¬ 
terest you, Clement.” 

“Oh, no,” replied Dowsing, “nothing in the 
theatre interests me except my own plays. Apart 
from them I consider it an inferior form of art.” 

Lady Dakin’s modest “one or two” bore, in fact, 
no relation to the actual numbers who soon began to 
fill her small drawing-room. Like many elderly ladies 
who live alone, she had an almost morbid dread of 
solitary evenings, and though her intimate friends 
were few, she had, in the course of a long life, built 
up a wide circle of acquaintanceship. It satisfied her 
craving for company to fill her house, night after 
night, with guests, and flattered her intellectual pre¬ 
tensions to sit enthroned upon a sofa, and, with a 
constant “Now, young man, come here and talk to 
me for a few minutes,” to concentrate upon herself 
a stream of real or potential notabilities. Unfortu¬ 
nately her sense of quality was not unerring, and it 


3 o8 An Unknown Quantity 

would have been an occupation full of amusement for 
anybody gifted with a power of detachment and a 
talent for criticism, to watch and classify the 
strange hauls that came to her wide-flung net. He 
would have found in the ‘‘catch’’ of an average eve¬ 
ning a very fair epitome of the “successfully” ar¬ 
tistic and the artistic-social London of his time: a 
sprinkling of “accepted” writers, such as Dowsing, 
one or two Academicians, a few of the older mem¬ 
bers of once revolutionary “groups” grown tolerant 
in their maturity, literary adventurers like Peter 
Scammel, greedy for the hospitality of the rich, but 
without conscience in the matter of turning it, later, 
to journalistic account, and, flitting about among the 
larger fish, an ever-increasing number of those flash¬ 
ing, darting, creatures who dwell, in spirit, between 
Bohemia and Mayfair, content to shine for a season, 
to flicker in the shallows of both worlds, and then 

• • • f ' 

to die. Social “climbers,” too, he would have 
found, mistaking, in their innocence. Shepherd Mar¬ 
ket for Grosvenor Square, and now and again the 
strange portent of a real person cunningly enticed 
through the meshes, or, like David, cynically content 
to find a moment’s pleasure and profit in any society, 
fully conscious of a spirit truly independent and 
sufficiently strong to take no permanent impress 
from so poor a mould. He would have turned away, 
one supposes, after an hour or two of such scrutiny, 
with a smile half scornful, half amused, for a kindly, 
elderly, rich and rather foolish hostess and a talking, 
greedy, posturing company of the second rate. 

It is not surprising that Joyce was unconscious of 
any such impression. Seated on the sofa by Lady 
Dakin’s side, she could gaze and wonder to her 


An Unknown Quantity 309 

heart’s content, secure and happy in a temporary ob¬ 
scurity imposed upon her by the close proximity of 
so regal an individual. This indeed was “society,” 
here, at last, she was holding the hoped for, tangible 
results of a marriage which, such a short time ago, 
she had begun to envisage miserably as a failure. 
She was as much an alien here, of course, as she had 
been in Swan Walk, but the sense of strangeness was 
different. It would need constant care and watchful¬ 
ness to attain to a condition of easy intimacy in such 
surroundings, but the task, she felt, was within her 
powers and the trouble worth taking because the 
prize was glittering and its value comprehensible. 
The vulgarities of the scene entranced her, visions of 
“bejewelled” women, and vistas of “gentlemen,” all 
of them—this was a point she determined to “have 
out” with Evelyn as soon as they got home—in eve¬ 
ning dress. To be one of these people was to be 
somebody, somebody, that is, in a sense that she 
could understand. Their conventions and manners 
she could recognise and learn. What were they, 
after all, but the expression of a code that she and 
her friends had always, from a distance, admired 
and copied? Already she could see just where, in 
her old life, inexperience had led her astray, ob¬ 
serve the points in her ancient scheme of behaviour 
that needed but a slight modification and refinement 
to make her indistinguishable from any of the 
women round Lady Dakin’s sofa. The mastery of 
new conventions held, in itself, no terrors for her: 
it was the complication and bewildering aimlessness 
of unconventionality that, in the studios of Chelsea, 
puzzled her, irritated her, and seemed so vulgar and 
undesirable. More than anything else it had been 



310 An Unknown Quantity 

this pointlessness of her husband’s Bohemia that 
had antagonised her. Its studied freedoms had 
seemed to her to be merely ‘‘common,” its attain¬ 
ments sordid, its ambitions incomprehensible. These 
people, she would have admitted, talked too of things 
she no more understood than she had understood 
Langley, and “Bunny,” and Jimmy McLennan, but 
they talked as Clement Dowsing had talked, with a 
proper reverence for money and success. In short, 
though perhaps, even to herself, she wouldn’t have 
put the matter quite so bluntly, she could “put up” 
with their conversation for the sake of an established 
background which she could appreciate and desire. 

She glanced at Evelyn out of the corner of her eye. 
Oh, he was enjoying himself like anything, just as 
she knew he would despite his protestations, and it 
was she who had made him come—the certainty of 
that sent a warm shiver of delight down her back— 
she who, impossible though it might seem, had in¬ 
troduced him to his own proper sphere. For a mo¬ 
ment she could almost hear Mrs. Eendle’s whispered 
approval. 

Evelyn was, in fact, as she had guessed, enjoying 
himself profoundly. Lady Dakin did not do things 
by halves, and she made a point of setting her bright, 
new catch much garnished and bedecked upon her re¬ 
splendent “slab.” 

“I want you to stay by me,” she had said to him 
earlier in the evening, and as each fresh arrival 
came to her sofa she introduced him with an air of 
adding to her spoken words, “This is the famous Mr. 
Kendle, and if you don’t know why he’s famous so 
much the worse for you, for 1 shan’t help you out!” 

The implied flattery had its effect upon him and he 



An Unknown.Quantity 311 

caught himself, after a while, responding, with a 
faint air of condescension and a sense of satisfaction 
that he was, indeed, known, by name at least, to a 
far greater number of people than he had ever 
thought possible. Once or twice, however, he was 
conscious of a slight sense of shame, but the sight of 
David and Scammel in a far corner of the room 
helped to reassure him by giving an impression that 
he was within measurable distance of his own world. 

As soon as he could do so without rudeness, he 
wandered across to where the little Jew was leaning 
moodily against the wall. 

‘‘Hullo, Louis,” he said, “I’d no idea you were 
going to be here!” 

“And you, my dearf C’est une galere, n’est-ce 
pas? Mon Dieu, quelle bourgeoisie!” 

“She’s a kind old thing, you know.” 

‘ ‘ La Dakin ? C ’est une type, qa ,! And her, how do 
you call it in English?—her ‘salon’; what solemns! 
And at our Jimmy there are the solemns too, isn’t 
it, but of a different genre? Ah, you English, your 
grand monde and your vie de Boheme, quelle 
solemnite! You have not the gift! Still, it makes an 
amusement for me and for my little balalaika—but 
an amusement! Our Stephen? I do not see him 
here, he has not the entree?—I shall never, never 
learn these things. There will be no ‘seins pendus’ 
ce soir, mon vieux? It would not be the ‘thing’ with 
your Dakin, hein?” David smiled mischievously. 

Evelyn returned the smile. “I don’t think Stephen 
would quite fit in,” he said. 

Something in his tone made David cock a knowing 
eye. “And you, you fit?” he asked half mockingly, 
and then, without waiting for an answer, squatted 


312 An Unknown Quantity 

suddenly cross-legged on a cushion at his feet, and 
let his fingers flicker across the strings of his instru¬ 
ment. 

‘‘Bien!’’ he said, ‘‘I sing.” And, as Evelyn turned 
away, ‘^Attendez, mon vieux,” he murmured. “I 
sing to make the hair stand!” 

At the sound of his gentle thrumming, the bubbling 
pool of conversation stilled, gradually, to silence. 

It was not customary, in Lady Dakin’s drawing¬ 
room, for her guests to take the initiative, and the 
sudden stillness left her almost defenceless. With 
admirable sang-froid, however, she saved her dignity 
by issuing to the musician a cordial if tardy invita¬ 
tion. 

‘ ‘ Oh, Mr. David I ’ ’ she said, ‘ ‘ do sing to us: that 
will be delightful. ’ ’ 

The audience settled itself with whispers of well- 
bred expectancy, and Louis sang. 

Crouched on his cushion with eyes half closed he 
crooned a song of the Volga boatmen, swaying his 
body gently to the rhythm. The tune died softly 
and the singer, with scarcely a pause, arrogantly 
contemptuous of appreciation, broke into the meas¬ 
ured, sensuous beat of a Viennese cabaret song, fol¬ 
lowing it up with a scandalous ditty of the Parisian 
boulevards. The murmurs of polite encouragement 
and the laughter, obviously for the most part ig¬ 
norant, seemed to spur him on to worse enormities. 
To Evelyn the ‘‘argot” was almost entirely unintel¬ 
ligible, but from words caught here and there, and 
from the malicious gleam in the performer’s eyes, he 
deduced the appalling nature of the entertainment. 
He found himself resenting the little man’s ill-breed¬ 
ing, and though the recognition in himself of such. 


An Unknown Quantity 313 

hitherto unexpected, depths of prejudice was 
vaguely irritating, he could not fight altogether free 
of a sense of outraged decency. 

He glanced at Joyce and saw that she was smiling. 
He forgot, for the moment, that she could not pos¬ 
sibly understand a single word of what she was lis¬ 
tening to, and the sight served to increase his al¬ 
ready acute feeling of discomfort. In Jimmy’s 
studio, no doubt, he would have been amused at the 
songs and pleased to find his wife appreciative, but 
here, somehow, it was different. 

The smile, as he looked, grew even more radiant. 
He could not be expected to know that it arose 
neither from pleasure at an entirely unintelligible 
performance nor yet from a desire to please a kindly 
hostess. Had he been aware of its cause it is doubt¬ 
ful whether he would have been relieved or dis¬ 
tressed, for Joyce was smiling, quite consciously, 
from a sense of superiority. David in the abstract, 
David recalled to her mind by Lady Dakin’s remark 
on the staircase, had been distressingly part of all 
that world of her husband’s choosing against which 
she had so determinedly set her face, but David on 
the floor singing to her hostess’s guests was so ridicu¬ 
lously like a Music Hall performer, and she was so 
assuredly, so sublimely one of the high, important 
audience that it was almost in her heart to like him. 
He was the symbol, no longer of what she disliked 
and feared, but of what she could so easily learn to 
patronise. 


314 


An Unknown Quantity 


IV 

An hour later, in the bustle of general farewell, 
Clement Dowsing sauntered across the room and 
took Evelyn familiarly by the elbow. 

‘‘Look here, Eendle,’’ he said, “you’d better let 
me take you and your wife along in the car.” 

“Oh, but we’re miles out of your way!” 

“Nonsense, my dear fellow, I’m living in Knights- 
bridge, a matter of five minutes with a clear road. ’ ’ 

“But I’m sure it’s a dreadful nuisance; we can 
get home as easily as anything on a ’bus.” 

Dowsing looked at his watch. “Oh no, you can’t, 
it’s after twelve now.” 

Joyce glanced up at her husband with a smile. 
“It’s ever so kind of Mr. Dowsing,” she said. 

“Not kind a bit! it’s bad for me to have the car to 
myself: makes me feel dishonest. I’ll just run down 
and see whether Jackson’s brought her round.” 

Undoubtedly a great part of Dowsing’s charm lay 
in his power of fitting himself, instinctively, to what¬ 
ever company he was in. To be liked was a necessity 
of his nature, and just because the desire was so 
transparently innocent, so clearly free from all ul¬ 
terior motive, he rarely failed in the attainment of 
his object. With no more conscious effort than that 
of the chameleon he changed his colour to suit his 
companion of the moment, modulating the tones so 
subtly that it was difficult to point with certainty to 
the moment or the degree of the transition. 

As the car turned out of Hamilton Place west¬ 
wards, past Hyde Park Corner, he sighed audibly, 
as though freeing himself from a weight that had 


An Unknown Quantity 315 

been oppressing him all evening. Almost as clearly, 
as if he had put the thought into words, the sound 
and the gesture that accompanied it seemed to say, 
‘‘There now, that’s over and I can be myself!” 

“Your little friend was laughing at our dear 
hostess, I think, ’ ’ he remarked to Evelyn. ‘ ‘ Luckily, 
she couldn’t understand.” 

In the intimate luxury of the car Joyce felt ad¬ 
mirably at ease. “I think it was horrid of him,” 
she said; “she’s such a darling.” 

“He’s used to the life of the studios, you know.” 
Evelyn’s words were uttered in a tone of apology 
that seemed to imply that the speaker had left far be¬ 
hind, if indeed he had ever known, the follies of the 
‘Quartier.’ ” 

“He’s a French Jew, isn’t he, Evelyn?” Joyce 
queried, and might have been making inquiries into 
the pedigree of a doubtful dog. The memory of a 
dropped remark of Beverley’s tempted her, in a 
sudden desire to impress, to a new venturesomeness. 
“He’s very talented,” she added, thankful that the 
darkness hid her blush. 

Evelyn looked at her in quick surprise, but before 
he could say anything. Dowsing had seized the op¬ 
portunity. 

“He seems to me to be that rarest of all things, a 
born Bohemian,” he said, and Joyce blessed him 
silently for so adroit a rescue from the embarrass¬ 
ments of her earliest flight into the realm of artistic 
criticism. 

“He must be at least thirty-five,” he went on, 
“and by that time we visitors have usually found the 
seashore and pushed otf in a boat. It’s only the na¬ 
tives who die there—as a rule of mutual admiration. 



3i6 An Unknown Quantity 

A land of limited amusements, my dear Eendle, as 
you no doubt have discovered, a mirage that leaves 
one thirsty. Still, one should make one’s voyage to 
it, for it is part of the ‘Grand Tour’ of our time, and 
those who miss it are apt to become intellectually 
insular. Look at Henry, for instance, born with a 
silver pencil in his mouth and a three-column review 
for a Sunday paper in his brain! ’ ’ 

Evelyn laughed at the picture of Gritstone con¬ 
jured up by the words. 

“Do you know,” he said, “I’d never seen him be¬ 
fore, but he’s exactly like what I imagined him to 
be.” 

“Henry has attained to his present position by al¬ 
ways being ‘exactly like’ what every one with influ¬ 
ence has imagined he would be. The characteristic 
is usually termed, I believe, ‘reliability.’ Shepherd 
Market is a charming spot, and Lady Dakin the kind¬ 
est of hostesses, but I do find the atmosphere, some¬ 
times, a wee bit trying. Making fun of Henry is my 
safety valve. He rises so admirably, and the best 
of the joke is that he always goes away convinced 
that his own ponderous wit has left me finally flat¬ 
tened. I’m sure he’s positively looking forward to 
the Heretic, and the Smithfield fire he’ll lay his torch 
to. If only he had a touch of the divine gift of un¬ 
scrupulousness I’d accuse him of having his condem¬ 
nation ready written before the thing appears, but 
that’s not like Henry. Oh no, he’s the soul of integ¬ 
rity, and he’ll read the first number from cover to 
cover and give me some neatly balanced credit for 
all my personal contributions!” 

“You are really starting a magazine then?” 
Evelyn asked. 


An Unknown Quantity 317 

^‘Indeed I am, if only to annoy Henry, though as a 
matter of fact I’m quite wonderfully serious about it 
and very much excited. It’s not going to be all a 
joke by any means. ’ ’ 

Silence descended upon them until the car pulled 
up slowly in the silence of Church Street. 

‘‘Well, it was awfully good of you to bring us 

back-” Evelyn began, when his wife interrupted 

him. 

“Wouldn’t Mr. Dowsing like to come in for a little 
and talk about his magazine?” she innocently sug¬ 
gested. 

“Oh, may I? You see, honestly, I’m as excited as 
a child over the business, and I’ve heaps to say. Are 
you sure, though, that I shan’t be keeping you up?” 

“Of course not, will he, dear?” 

To Evelyn it seemed that the short journey from 
Piccadilly had landed him in an utterly strange coun¬ 
try. He scarcely recognised his wife behind her 
novel mask of self-confidence. The experiences of 
the evening had dazed him, but they had left him 
with a sense of being vividly, almost painfully, 
awake, and Dowsing’s conversation was undoubt¬ 
edly amusing. 

“Do please come in,!’ he echoed. 

“Well, if you really mean it-You can go home 

now, Jackson; I shall walk.” 

The car glided away and all three entered the 
house. In Evelyn’s study the two men settled them¬ 
selves into arm-chairs before the gas fire, while 
Joyce, her cloak and wraps thrown across the table, 
busied herself with whisky and siphons. A pleasant 
sense of cosiness filled the room. 

Dowsing had not exaggerated when he described 




3i8 An Unknown Quantity 

himself as being excited. He flung himself into talk 
of his project with all the infectious abandon of a 
child discussing the possibilities of Christmas. For 
the time being his affectations of speech and man¬ 
ner dwindled to insignificance. He was almost simple 
beneath the flood of his enthusiasm. 

“You see/’ he said, “I want to make this thing a 
real, big success. I don’t see why the monthly re¬ 
view public should have no escape from dear Henry. 
As a matter of fact, I shall be doing him a good turn, 
though he won’t see it like that. I shall ‘ginger him 
up,’ give him competition to face, for he’s got none 
worth speaking of at present. As I’ve told you al¬ 
ready, the Heretic won’t be a joke by any means, but 
it will be alive.” 

“And modern?” suggested Evelyn. 

“Let us say readable, and good. I know there’s 
room for it. You see, to start with I’ve got my own 
public, but I’m not going to stop there. That’s one 
of the ways in which Henry and I differ. He’s got 
his readers and he keeps them as he does his adver¬ 
tisements, but he never breaks new ground. Now 
7’m out to capture his people as well as to amuse 
my own. I’m not blind to the risks, but I’ve got a 
backing, and I’m not underestimating the work. It’s 
going to be a big job and we’ve got to produce some¬ 
thing worth buying, something with ‘guts’ in it. 
That’s where I want your help.” 

‘‘My help?” 

“Of course! I’m not using you as a safety valve 
for my plans; I want you very definitely to come in. ’ ’ 

“But what on earth can I do?” 

“An enormous amount. Are you working on 
anything now?” 


An Unknown Quantity 319 

“I’ve got a book planned out, and I’ve done about 
twenty thousand words of it/’ 

‘ ‘ Well, I want to run a serial novel; will you let me 
look at it?” 

‘‘Oh, hut I know you won’t like it!” 

“Why should you know anything of the sort! Let 
us understand one another clearly and talk business. 
What work of yours I’ve seen I admire. You mustn’t 
misunderstand me—I don’t mean that it’s perfect by 
any means, but it is full of promise. You’ve got 
heaps to say, but you haven’t as yet found the knack 
of making people listen. I don’t want you to take 
everything I say au pied de la lettre —we all talk for 
effect sometimes—but do me the justice of believing 
that I know perfectly well what I’m saying. There 
was a lot of sound sense tucked away beneath my 
jabber at dinner. There’s quality and distinction 
about your work that I’ve never had and never could 
have, but it’s still amateurish. As an artist you’re 
adolescent and you’re playing with the monastic 
ideal, which means that you’re fundamentally fright¬ 
ened of life, scared by the prospect of wear and tear. 
If you’re ever going to do anything worth doing 
you’ve got to get through that phase, and it’s be¬ 
cause I believe you are going to get through it and 
come out on the other side, that I’m talking like this 
to you and giving myself away. I know exactly what 
your friends in Chelsea say of me. They call me a 
vulgar cheapjack and make that an excuse for never 
reading a word I write. They hate me because I’ve 
made a success that the world can understand, and 
they pretend to despise me because I’m proud of it. 
My dear fellow, if I changed my name to-morrow 
and sent my plays to the Stage Society instead of to 



320 An Unknown Quantity 

the Haymarket and the St. James, they’d be round 
me like flies! Unlike Henry I never preach, at least 
when I do I call it ‘making suggestions,’ and my first 
one to you is, don’t despise the public just because 
they take the bad stuff with the good. You depend 
upon them as much as the shopkeeper round the cor¬ 
ner does, and it’s up to you to give a good money’s 
worth. Well now, will you come on to my hoarding?” 

“You mean you want to ‘boom’ me?” 

Dowsing leaned back in his chair and laughed. 

“You’d like to add ‘like a patent soup,’ only 
you’re too polite! Nonsense, I w^ant to give you a 
chance of ‘booming’ yourself. I want your work to 
do the talking.” 

“I must write as I feel: I can’t compromise.” 

“Who’s asking you to compromise, as you call it? 
I believe you think I want to put a salvage crew on 
board your ship! Uet that idea out of your head; 
all I’m going to do is to give you a helping ‘tug’ into 
the open sea.” 

“I must thinlv about it: the whole idea’s so far out 
of my line.” 

“Think about it as much as you like, that’s just 
what I want you to do: why not begin now? May I 
see what you’ve got done of this book?” 

“Now?” 

“Why not? And you can give me a rough idea of 
how it’s going to work out.” 

Evelyn got up and stood for a moment hesitating. 
Suddenly he noticed Joyce sitting quietly by the 
table. 

“My dear,” he said, “if we’re going to sit up half 
the night talking, I think you’d better go to bed.” 


An Unknown Quantity 321 

She smiled. ‘‘If Mr. Dowsing won^t think it very 
rude I will. ’ ’ 

“My dear Mrs. Kendle, I’m unforgivable!” In 
a flash Dowsing was on his feet. “MHiat a dreadful 
boor you must think me! We’ll have our talk some 
other time, Eendle; why it’s after one!” He looked 
round for his hat. 

“Oh no, please, please, don’t go!” There was 
real eagerness in her voice. “I know Evelyn would 
like to go on talking: I’ll just leave you two here.” 

“Well, if our chatter really won’t keep you 
awake ? ’ ’ 

“Of course it won’t! Good night, Mr. Dowsing; 
I hope you’ll come and dine some evening?” 

‘ ‘ I should be charmed. ’ ’ 

Joyce went up to bed with the sound of the two 
voices coming thickly to her from behind the closed 
door. The evening, she felt, had been really enjoy¬ 
able. 


THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTEE 


I 


S upon a far-visible upland the long line of a 



Eoman road will sometimes pause to change 
the direction of its thrust, so too some lives converge 
to incidents that bear, at least in retrospect, all the 
character of landmarks. 

Lady Dakin ^s dinner party was, undoubtedly, 
such a point, and from it dated, not only a new 
phase in Evelyn Eendle’s career as a writer, but 
also a distinct change in the quality of his relation 
to his wife. It was as though the almost physical 
shock that came to him in Dowsing’s car, as he 
recognised in Joyce the presence of characteristics 
never before suspected, had shaken the pattern of 
some giant kaleidoscope into new combinations be¬ 
fore his eyes. She too was quick to notice the 
change, for on the very day that followed that event¬ 
ful evening she became aware that he was talking 
to her as he had never done before, mth a freedom 
that conveyed a subtle implication of intellectual 
equality. The novelty of his attitude was distinctly 
pleasing, for it gave her a sense of personal impor¬ 
tance that had been lacking hitherto in their life 
together. 

At breakfast he started to talk of Dowsing. 
“Well, what do you think of him now?” he asked. 


322 


An Unknown Quantity 323 

Instinctively she “hedged/’ 

‘‘He seemed very polite, and I think he likes you 
awfully.” 

“Oh, I suppose I’m all in the way of a new ex¬ 
perience for him; I doubt if there’s more in it than 
that. Still, he’s not such a bad chap; perhaps I 
was a little bit unjust about him before.” 

“I don’t think I understand much of what he 
says.” 

“He talks an awful lot of rot, my dear, but I have 
an idea that he knows good work when he sees it. 
He’s been spoiled by success, but there’s more in 
him than he cares to show.” He paused and then 
added in a tone of challenge, “That doesn’t alter 
my views about his own stutf, most of which is cheap 
and vulgar.” 

“Of course, dear.” 

She waited in silence until he should choose to 
become more communicative. He showed no sign, 
however, of speaking further on the subject, and 
the question she longed to ask could be withheld no 
longer. 

“Hid he like your new book, Evelyn I” 

‘ ‘ Oh, he said some nice things about it; I suppose 
he felt he had to, but they don’t amount to much.” 

“Is he going to print it in his magazine?” 

“He hasn’t decided yet. I’m going to show it to 
him again when I’ve got on a bit more.” 

“I suppose it would mean a lot of money?” she 
wistfully inquired. 

“I suppose he’d pay me well for it, but I don’t 
want to make money in that way.” 

“In what way, dear?” 

“Oh, writing down to his public.” 


324 An Unknown Quantity 

“Does he want yon to do that?’^ 

“He says he doesn’t, but I have my doubts. 
Anyhow, it’s not worth worrying about; he’ll give 
me up in a day or two or as soon as he finds that 
I’m not prepared to take him without question.” 

The next few weeks, however, showed that this 
view was mistaken. Dowsing showed no signs of 
“giving him up.” On the contrary, his interest 
seemed to increase, and, as Joyce lost no opportu¬ 
nity of tactfully maintaining the pressure of her 
own particular attack, Evelyn’s suspicions began to 
melt rapidly away in the warmth of constant atten¬ 
tion and encouragement. 

Had Dowsing been asked to describe the motives 
of his new eagerness, he would certainly have been 
at no loss to produce a seemingly adequate expla¬ 
nation, but it would by no means have accounted 
for a mood the real reasons for which he did not 
trouble to analyse. Beneath the studied mannerisms 
of his social attitude he was, strangely enough, a 
man of vivid impulses. He would let his brain play 
for weeks and months round some idea quite vaguely 
sketched, until some eddy of emotion would swirl it, 
finally, into violent activity, or, with equal likelihood, 
drown it beneath the cataract of some new interest. 
His actions, consequently, were scarcely ever dic¬ 
tated primarily by his reason, though from sheer 
nimbleness of brain and the love of reconciling 
apparent opposites, he could always produce seem¬ 
ingly logical explanations for the most inconsequent 
performances. He was, in fact, like a highly trained 
acrobat who can turn an unpremediated fall to ex¬ 
cellent account by landing, after a spectacular 
somersault or two, on his feet. His conversation 


An Unknown Quantity 325 

rarely represented his convictions, but was born, as 
a rule, on the spur of the moment, from some chance 
phrase uttered or overheard, which he loved to de¬ 
velop in paradox and epigram, secure in the con¬ 
viction that, if need be, he could fit it into the 
sequence of a future argument. As a result of many 
years spent in convincing others of the logic of his 
illogical propositions, he had come to believe, com¬ 
placently, in the sincerity of his own antics, and to 
view himself as an eminently reasonable being, 
though, as a matter of fact, his brain and the im¬ 
pulses that really dictated his actions, pursued 
quite independent paths. It was said of him, often 
enough, that his moments of spontaneity were part 
of a carefully studied pose, hut it would have been 
more accurate to assert that the promptings of his 
queer but very real impulses tempted him to an 
assumption of artificiality as complete as it was dis¬ 
continuous. 

The sudden enthusiasm with which he now pur¬ 
sued the project of his magazine was entirely typical 
of him. For months he had kept the idea shut away, 
as it were, like a favourite toy, to be taken out at 
intervals, contemplated, polished, and locked away 
again. He had even gone so far as to inquire 
vaguely into the possibilities of financial support 
for such a venture. Farther than that he had not 
proceeded, until, in a fit of amused perversity, he 
had unlocked the cupboard, thrown the plaything at 
Grilstone’s head, and lost the key. Fate had chosen 
the same moment in which to introduce him to 
Evelyn, and on the flood of one of his customary 
impulses he had flung himself, with what he 
imagined to he the abandon of complete sincerity 


326 An Unknown Quantity 

and unreserve, into the arms' of a new friendship. 
From that moment the idea of the human relation¬ 
ship and that of the scheme, now fully launched, of 
his paper, became inextricably interwoven in his 
mind. 

Why he should have been drawn so violently to 
the mere chance acquaintance of a dinner-party, 
must remain a mystery. Though he was an egotist 
by conviction he was not selfish by nature, and a 
queer tendency to idolatry underlay a temperament 
that was curiously compact of artifice and inno¬ 
cence. His eloquent admiration of Evelyn’s work 
was not by any means the result, merely, of a desire 
to flatter. He had a real gift for criticising achieve¬ 
ments other than his own, and a vivid appreciation 
of what he considered talented. Success had given 
him everything he wanted, and he was pleasantly 
willing to play the door-keeper and guide to a land 
so overflowing with milk and honey. By his own 
etforts he had attained to a position of comparative 
wealth and considerable power, but in the course of 
the journey his perceptions had become so blunted 
that he could no longer understand, except super¬ 
ficially, an ambition directed to less material ends. 
It pleased his vanity to influence the young, and if, 
as is possible, an inner voice did occasionally 
whisper to him that his allurements might be dan¬ 
gerous, he quieted his conscience by the assurance 
that he was acting with every honourable intention 
towards his victims. There was, assuredly, nothing 
more sinister than this in his motive for ‘‘taking 
up” Evelyn, and though it may not account wholly 
for his action, it must bear a large part of the re¬ 
sponsibility. The spiteful might have whispered. 


An Unknown Quantity 327 

probably, in fact, did whisper, of a charming wife 
and the undeniable claims of a patron, but the 
charge would have been unfounded. With all his 
many faults Dowsing was not a philanderer, and it 
is doubtful whether he gave to Joyce any more 
attention than to a pleasing and ornamental back¬ 
ground to the scene of his manoeuvres. 

Certain it is that no such suspicion ever entered 
Evelyn’s head. It would have needed the strongest 
possible provocation to rouse him to jealousy, or to 
make him contemplate the possibility that Dowsing’s 
attention was caused by anything other than his 
own peculiar merits. So completely did he regard 
his wife as dependent upon, and formed by, him, 
that he was incapable, at least for the time being, 
of envisaging her in any relation to the world which 
did not involve his own paramount partnership. 
Even the sense of surprise with which he regarded 
her increased self-confidence and the ease with 
which she adapted herself to new circumstances, 
faded rapidly. Quite unconsciously he took to his 
own credit every fresh development in her, fitting 
himself automatically to the demands of each new 
situation as it arose. Thus, he no sooner decided 
that he really had enjoyed himself at Lady Dakin’s, 
than he took for granted, without a single qualm 
of doubt, that it was he who had, in the first place, 
accepted her invitation, and that he had done so 
with the sole object of giving Joyce the satisfaction 
of a perfectly reasonable desire. He assured him¬ 
self, moreover, that it was he who by tactful and 
delicate handling, had fitted her so admirably to 
satisfy the social demands of an exacting hostess. 
‘‘The dear child needs amusement,” he reflected. 


328 An Unknown Quantity 

and plunged into his work comfortably conscious 
that his wife was happy. To her he said, ‘‘These 
friends of mine aren’t so terrible after all, are 
they? What a foolish child to think they wouldn’t 
like her!” And she smiled in answer. 

In this mood he took her to dine with Eachel in 
Wilton Street and, as a result, with several of 
Kachel’s friends in various parts of London. No 
longer susceptible to surprise, he regarded, on each 
occasion, her increased display of social assurance 
with a pleased and proprietary eye, an air of watch¬ 
ful encouragement that all but said, “See how well 
she shapes!” 

The visit to Wilton Street had been marked by 
his appearance in full evening dress. Joyce, at 
first sight of him thus arrayed, had been tempted 
to comment on the concession, but a glance at the 
studied nonchalance of his expression had warned 
her to take silently for granted what he so obvi¬ 
ously wished to be regarded as the mere observance 
of a normal routine. Instinct told her far more 
clearly than any trained or conscious exercise of 
perception would have done, that her husband must, 
in this as in other things, be left always with the 
illusion of directing, not only his own, but her 
destiny, and her growing love of power, combined 
with the very real affection and respect that under¬ 
lay her attitude towards him, induced her, assured 
as she was of her own definite position behind the 
throne, to abandon to him the mere emblems and 
pomps of government. 

At the beginning of December, feeling that she 
had learned her lesson sufficiently to put some of 
her acquired knowledge to the test, she approached, 


An Unknown Quantity 329 

with some trepidation, the question of returning the 
hospitality they had received. To her relief Evelyn 
listened with sympathy to the proposal, rallying her 
upon the serious face with which she made her 
request. 

“So my absurd wife wants to play a game of 
hostess?’’ he laughingly inquired. 

“People have been so kind to us,” she replied. “I 
do think we ought. Besides I’ve been meaning to 
ask Mr. Dowsing over and over again. It’s ages 
since I said I would; and really Agnes cooks quite 
nicely, doesn’t she?” 

“I’m sure that under your supervision Agnes will 
cover herself with glory.” 

“Then you don’t mind?” 

“Why should I mind, goose? Who are to be the 
honoured guests?” She sat down beside him at his 
desk and with a pencil pressed to her chin frowned 
at a virgin sheet of notepaper before her. 

“Well, there’s Mr. Dowsing, of course, and your 
sister and her husband,” she began. “Then I 
thought-” 

He interrupted her. “If we are to have this 
banquet I should rather like to ask one or two of 
the old lot; I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve seen 
precious little of them.” 

The moment she had been fearing had arrived. 
Feebly she ventured a protest. “Oh, but do you 
think they’ll fit in?” 

“Of course they’ll fit in! Why shouldn’t they? 
I was thinking of Agatha and Jack, and Liell.” 

“I thought you said Mr. Beverley never dined 
out ? ’ ’ 



330 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘You must make him. I’m sure he won’t refuse 
an invitation from you.” 

“If he comes we shall have to ask two more 
ladies, and then we shall be nine. ’ ’ 

“Dear me, what a careful eye for the conven¬ 
tions! Still, it’s no good half doing things: let’s 
have our nine. That foolish Miss Pettiger will do 
for one; it’ll be fun to see what Liell makes of her.” 

“That’s only one.” 

“Surely there’s some one else? How about the 
angular widow we met at Rachel’s—Mrs., Mrs.-” 

“Mrs. Gatehouse; do you really want her?” 

“Heavens, what a name! She’ll do as well as 
another: does that satisfy you?” 

“I thmk it’ll be nice.” 

“Run along then, and send the invitations. By 
the way, when is the dissipation fixed for?” 

“It’s Wednesday to-day; how long ought I to give 
them ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, my dear, don’t ask me; I thought you 
knew! ’ ’ 

“I believe it’s supposed to be a fortnight: that 
won’t be too near Christmas, will it?” 

“It all sounds excellent, and quite in accordance 
with the rules.” 

“You’re laughing at me, Evelyn!” 

“Indeed I’m not: you seem to have the instincts 
of a born hostess!” 

She left him with a mind not altogether free from 
foreboding. Of course it might have been worse: 
he might have suggested Stephen Langley, or that 
tiresome Miss Carter, or, horror of horrors! even 
“Bunny”! If that had happened she didn’t know 
what she would have done. Rather than undergo 



An Unknown Quantity 331 

such an ordeal she would, she felt, have found some 
excuse for postponing the party altogether. As it 
was, well, Agatha Biscoe was all right, not too 
“Chelsea,” and her husband was at least atfable, 
but, Mr. Beverley—he might she feared, do or say 
anything. He wasn’t as bad as some of them and 
she had an idea that he liked her, but he was so 
“weird”! Perhaps he wouldn’t come—he hated 
going out, she knew, so perhaps he’d refuse after 
all. The thought encouraged her, and with a heart 
comparatively light she sat down to write her letters. 

Her heart sank again when, two days later, Liell 
replied that he would be delighted to come. In the 
increasing excitement of her preparations, however, 
she forgot everything except her determination to 
make the evening a success. For two days before 
the event Evelyn saw her hardly at all, except to 
glimpse her returning triumphantly from mysterious 
shopping expeditions, eyes shining with excitement, 
and arms bulging with parcels. On such occasions 
he would smile to himself and return to his work 
with a sigh of relief, pondering upon the ease with 
which a wife, when one knew her as well as he knew 
Joyce, could be kept amused. Even at meals she 
was distrait, and every now and again, in response 
to hoarse whispers from Agnes, would hurriedly 
leave the room to carry on outside long, murmured 
colloquies, that came to him in muffled sentences 
through the half-open door. 

On the morning of the actual day she came to 
him with a timid request. 

“The whole afternoon, my dear?” was his sur¬ 
prised query. “What can you want to be doing all 
that time?” 


332 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘It’s because I want it all to be a surprise,” she 
protested, “and you mustn’t come back till every¬ 
thing’s ready.” 

“What a baby you are, after all!” he said, patting 
her hand with an air of reassuring superiority: 
“I’ll do exactly what you want, but I really can’t 
be turned out of house and home every time we 
have people to dinner, you know.” 

“Only just for this once!” she pleaded; “you see 
it’s the first time.” 

True to the letter of his promise, he stayed away 
all afternoon, and as he walked homeward down 
the Fulham Eoad under the frosty sky of the early 
evening he could not but confess, half shamefacedly, 
to himself that he was distinctly excited. He tried 
to set his will to overcome so childish a weakness, 
but the emotion persisted, and he let himself into 
the house with a vaguely pleasant sense of antici¬ 
pation. 

In the narrow hall a strange figure, grey-haired, 
starched and aproned, confronted him for a moment 
before slipping noiselessly behind the dining-room 
door. 

He ran upstairs to his wife’s room. 

‘ ‘ Is that you, Evelyn ? ’ ’ came her voice in response 
to his knock. 

“Just one moment, dear, and you can come in.” 

For what seemed an age he waited, until her mur¬ 
mured “Now you can come in” put an end to his 
suspense. 

She was standing before her dressing table, the 
light from the hanging electric cluster saturating 
the dark mass of her hair with gold. With one 
hand she held the folds of a deep blue dressing 


An Unknown Quantity 333 

gown across her breast As he entered she smiled 
at him. 

“You have been good, Evelynshe said. 

Something in her attitude, some subtle refinement 
of charm, made him feel unaccountably self-con¬ 
scious, but for the moment an impatient curiosity, 
half childish, half irritated, drove other thoughts 
from his mind. 

“Joyce, who on earth is that downstairs!^’ he 
asked. 

“Downstairs, dear!” 

“Yes, that woman.” 

“Oh her! it’s only Agnes’s aunt, you old silly, I 
couldn’t think who you meant. She’s come in to 
help; you see Agnes is doing the cooking. ’ ’ 

“Well, I suppose it can’t be helped, but we do 
seem to be making rather a splash.” 

“You see, you said it was no good half doing 
things, and—Evelyn-” 

“Yes!” 

“I’ve done it almost all out of the housekeeping 
money: there’s only Agnes’s aunt extra, do you 
mind! ’ ’ 

The implication of possible stinginess stung him. 

“Of course I don’t mind,” he replied, “if it makes 
you happy.” The sense of her beauty went to his 
head like wine. He moved a step nearer to her. 

“Joyce,” he said, and his voice was husky, “how 
bewitching you look!” 

“Do I, really!” 

“Wonderful, but somehow different.” 

“Different! I expect it’s my hair.” 

“Yes, yes, you’ve done it in a new way.” 



334 An Unknown Quantity 

“IVe got it as it was that night at the ball; I 
thought you liked it/’ 

For answer he took her in his arms. 

“Now run away, dear, and dress,” she said; “it’s 
dreadfully late.” 

From first to last the dinner was an unclouded 
success. Agnes cooked as though by inspiration, 
and her aunt—apparently she had no name of her 
own—grimly smiling and wholly competent, seemed 
drawn by Fate into a general conspiracy to surround 
Joyce’s debut as a hostess with a shimmering 
mantle of glory. In the laughing, assured woman 
who faced him from behind clustered flowers, Evelyn 
scarcely recognised his wife, and, as the meal pro¬ 
gressed, he found himself wondering again and 
again at a knowledge of domestic refinements for 
which he had never given her credit. Conscious of 
experience still incomplete, she had relied with in¬ 
stinctive wisdom on memory, confident that it would 
never occur to her husband to recognise in the 
sequence of her dinner a repetition dish for dish of 
the almost forgotten banquet at Shepherd Market. 
Miss Pettiger might, of course, be the possessor 
of a spitefully retentive memory, but the risk was 
not great. It was, as matters turned out, non¬ 
existent, for the giggling spinster was too much 
occupied in breathlessly protesting at the sallies of 
Mr. Beverley, whom she avowed, two minutes after 
her introduction, to be “deliciously wicked,” to 
spare a thought for her hostess’s possible short¬ 
comings. 

No suspicion of awkwardness came to mar the 
general affability of the company. Even Eachel, 
conscious, it seemed, that something was expected of 


An Unknown Quantity 335 

her, tamed for the time being the forwardness of 
her tongue, and strove to play a gentle part. Her 
husband, it is true, threatened to chill the earlier 
hours of the evening with his customary air of 
slightly contemptuous boredom. The failure of his 
host to understand the simplest reference to ‘‘medal 
play’^ and “hazards,’’ drove him to the disconsolate 
silence of the drawing-room window seat, where he 
remained until Fortune sent him Clement, who ful¬ 
filled even his conditions of success as a sympathetic 
listener. From that moment he regarded the com¬ 
pany with a beaming tolerance. Mrs. Gatehouse, 
too, might have marred the harmony of the evening, 
for, as a rule, dinner without bridge was, to her, 
a certain excuse for ill-temper, but some sentimental 
spring, deep hidden in her nature, was touched as 
much to her own as to Rachel’s surprise by the 
sight of the “young people” in their glory, and she 
sat until quite late, with a smile of maudlin contem¬ 
plation on her bony countenance, resigned for once 
to the absence of her beloved cards. 

As for Evelyn’s friends, the thought of whom had, 
up to the moment of their arrival filled Joyce with 
misgiving, their behaviour was beyond all praise. 
Beverley (in evening dress) was, in particular, 
attentive and intelligible, patient with Miss Pettiger, 
polite to Dowsing, friendly to Joyce. 

In the drawing-room after dinner he came up to 
her with a smile. 

“What have you done to Evelyn?” he asked; 
“he’s a different person!” 

She felt unaccountably moved by the obviously 
intentional kindness of the words. 


336 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘Do you think sol^^ she said, and added, “he’s 
working awfully hard.” 

“And learning too, I hope.” 

At so unexpected a bristling of his “queerness” 
she puckered her forehead into a puzzled frown. 

“Oh, but I can’t teach him anything!” she re¬ 
plied. 

Beverley, still smiling, laid a sudden hand upon 
her arm. 

“Life can,” he said; “hold open the book a bit 
wider,” and he turned away. 

Later still Agatha too manoeuvred a momentary 
privacy despite Joyce’s frightened but half-hearted 
attempt delicately to avoid Avhat she felt might be 
a slightly embarrassing intimacy. She had not seen 
Mrs. Biscoe, except casually, since the occasion of 
Jimmy’s party, and in her almost morbid desire to 
bury that particular phase of her past the prospect 
of its solemn disinterment was distasteful to her. 
Agatha’s reference was, however, of the lightest: 
it merely brushed the grave without disturbing the 
corpse. 

“My dear,” she said gently, “it does me good to 
see you so happy.” 

The maternal tone in which the words were 
spoken was vaguely irritating. Joyce had not yet 
altogether outgrown the tendency to impute patron¬ 
age where only kindness was intended. On that 
dreadful evening—how mercifully long ago it 
seemed now!—she had of course laid her head 
without question on the responsive bosom, but then, 
as she would have put it, she had not been “herself.” 
Still, Agatha, seen even in the light of her new 
ideals, was certainly the most presentable of 


An Unknown Quantity 337 

Evelyn friends, and she had no desire to antago¬ 
nise her. 

‘‘Oh, I am!^’ she sweetly smiled. 

“It seems years since I saw either of you, you 
know,’’ the kind voice continued, “and I’m always 
so interested.” She paused as though half expect¬ 
ing a reply, but none came and she spoke again. 
“You mustn’t mind that, my dear; you see I used 
to see so much of Evelyn, I was what he called his 
‘Mother Confessor’—in his sentimental moments! 
I heard so many things; why, I was the first to 
hear of you. Do say you don’t detest middle-aged 
women with a passion for the young! I try not to 
be a meddling nuisance!” 

Something in the words touched Joyce to a mo¬ 
ment’s real softness. 

“Of course I don’t!” she said; “I think it was 
awfully nice of you to come, we wanted you to so 
much. ’ ’ 

“It was sweet of you to want me.” 

“But you’re such an old friend of Evelyn’s.” 

“You’ve made new ones of your own now, and 
some wives don’t like their husband’s friends.” 

Joyce glanced up, ear quick for irony, but the 
smiling face showed nothing but the frankest 
kindliness. 

***** 

At an hour sufficiently late to bring assurance of 
success, her guests began to leave. A few yards 
from the house Agatha and her husband turned at 
the sound of hurried steps. 

“Hullo, Liell,” said Jack; “we didn’t know you 
were coming this way, or we’d have waited.” 

“It’s entirely out of my beat, but the night’s 


338 An Unknown Quantity 

perishing and a walk will warm me up. Besides, 
I need exercise to settle Evelyn’s unexpectedly 
profuse banquet.” 

For a while the trio walked in silence, their foot¬ 
steps echoing along the deserted streets. Jack was 
the first to break the silence. 

“Well,” he said, “who’s going to be honest?” 

“Honest, Jack?” queried his wife. 

“Oh, well, spiteful if you like.” 

Beverley grunted. “I don’t mind confessing I 
was curious, I still am.” 

Nothing more was said until Agatha, looking 
straight before her, uttered her considered judg¬ 
ment. 

“I think it’s an entirely happy marriage.” 

“Naturally, it’s only six months old!” 

“Liell, how horrid you are to-night! Is there any 
reason why it shouldn’t be a success?” 

“None that I can see at present: that’s what I’m 
still curious about.” 

“I own I was worried at first: three months ago 
he was going just the right way to make her 
miserable.” 

“Oh, certainly she’s done wonders; I told her so.” 

“You didn’t, Liell!” 

“I did indeed: one can say so much when one’s 
confident of not being understood!” 

“Do you think it is so wonderful that he should 
fall in love with her?” 

“Oh, dear me, no.” 

“I must say it beats me why he should have 
wanted to marry her,” Jack suddenly remarked; 
“she’s a pretty enough little thing, but—well ” 

“I’m thankful he did,” returned his wife; “it’s 



339 


An Unknown Quantity 

given him somebody to think of besides himself, I 
wasn’t at all comfortable when he told me about her 

first: his attitude was too much, too much-” 

She paused. 

‘ ‘ Too much—yes 1 ’ Beverley encouraged her. 

‘‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to betray a confidence, but 
I don’t think I shall be doing so. What I mean is 
that he was rather like a spoiled child crying for 
a toy he couldn’t get. And then, afterwards, at 
Jimmy’s, I was worried about her. It looked so 
much as though it had been nothing but an infatua¬ 
tion after all, as though he wasn’t bothering about 
her any more except just to force her into his own 
groove. It was delightful this evening to be able 
to confess myself wrong. I really do think he’s 
trying to understand her and give her the kind of 
pleasure she wants: and it’s such harmless pleasure. 
Oh, Evelyn’s gone up by leaps in my estimation!” 

Beverley glanced at her. “Evelyn was always 
full of theories about marriage; I had the benefit 
of some of them. I admit he seems to be doing 
pretty well.” 

“Was filling his house with the stupid rich one 
of the theories?” inquired Jack. 

Beverley laughed. “You don’t hke the new 
Eendle circle?” he asked. 

“Well, look at them, a superannuated bridge-fiend 
and a giggling nonentity!” 

“The amiable Mrs. Birk strikes me as being no 
fool.” 

“She’s not, but she’s spiteful and snobbish; I 
could see that, though I fancy she was on her good 
behaviour. And then—Dowsing! ’ ’ 

“The great man?” mocked Beverley. 



340 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘My dear Liell, what a perfectly poisonous 
fellow!’’ 

“Come, Jack, don’t exaggerate! Dowsing, I 
imagine, would like to regard the world as his clique, 
and that is one better than the pastime most of our 
friends indulge in, of regarding their clique as the 
world! ’ ’ 

“The man’s a dangerous influence!” 

“If Evelyn’s as susceptible as you imply all in¬ 
fluences are dangerous.” 

“He’s been such a sincere artist up till now! He 
could do wonderful work if he gave himself the 
chance. ’ ’ 

“Sincere artist!” Beverley snorted, “meaning 
precisely what? That he’s satisfied ‘Bunny,’ and 
Stephen, and Malcolm, and a few more because he’s 
talked their jargon! Jack, don’t be a damned 
fool!” 

Agatha, steadfast still in her championship, took 
her husband’s arm. 

“Jack dear,” she said, “you are really being an 
old silly. Why should you be so gloomy just because 
Evelyn’s wise enough to give his wife a little nor¬ 
mal enjoyment?” 

“It’s all very well you two talking, but I know 
I’m right. Evelyn’ll ruin himself and realise it 
when it’s too late.” 

They turned a corner into the bleak, canal-like 
vistas of the King’s Koad. Beverley stopped. 

“Well, you old croaker, I shall leave you here,” 
he said. “Good night; good night, Agatha.” 


An Unknown Quantity 


341 


II 

Rachel, too, had views of her own which she set 
down at length in a letter to her mother who was 
spending the winter in the South of France. 

“ . . . You’re missing a great deal more than a 
family Christmas,” she wrote, ‘‘by staying away. 
Since your beloved son took it into his head to find 
a wife for himself, there’s no holding him, or rather 
there’s no holding her. Now don’t sit up and rub 
your spectacles like an old darling, and take the 
next train home, and don’t think I’m a nasty, gos¬ 
siping, cynical daughter. You’ll approve whole¬ 
heartedly of the change-^oh yes, there is a change! 
Why, hasn’t she done in six months what I’ve failed 
to do, with the additional advantage—or is it 
^disadvantage!—of family ties, in as many years? 
She really is rather a wonder—I admit it, you see, 
even at the risk of your ‘I told you so’—^because, 
darling, when you said so it wasn’t as true as it is 
now. She was a common little thing, I don’t mean 
that she dropped her aitches, but, well you know 
exactly what I mean, and you can’t get over it. Not 
but what she has! oh yes, she’s over it and canter¬ 
ing along happily on the other side! I can’t help 
liking her for it and I do believe she’s forgetting 
to dislike me, which means, of course, that we are 
bosom friends or likely to become so in the very 
near future! 

“She’s quite amazingly ‘quick,’ and knows exactly 
what she wants, and how to get it. She saw, just as 
clearly as you and I did, what her weak points were, 
and she picks up hints in a manner that surpasses 



342 An Unknown Quantity 

description. You simply won’t know her with her 
new air of having been born, if not in Mayfair, at 
least not farther west than Harrods! Of course I 
don’t know where the actual spot was, and I’ve 
never even tried to get it out of Evelyn, if he know^s, 
but I suspect, mind you only suspect^ one of the 
outer suburbs. Oh, your darling Joyce is clever and 
she’s devoted to him, so you can sink back quite 
happily again into your chair. Heaven knows where 
and whether her own parents and relations are, 
certainly she’s found it convenient to forget them, 
and if she dislikes her old friends as completely as 
I gather she does Evelyn’s, I don’t fancy we shall 
see much of them. 

‘‘You see w'hat I’m coming to? Don’t pretend, 
mother mine, that you don’t approve, because you 
do! You don’t like Bohemia for your son any more 
than she likes it for herself, but you’re frightened 
of it, while she—well, she just snaps her fingers at 
it, all, that is, except the little one and she keeps 
that to twirl her husband round! And she twirls 
him in exactly the right direction. 

“Neither you nor I could ever have done half so 
well for him as he’s done, unconsciously of course, 
for himself. She didn’t marry him for Chelsea, and 
she’s gradually, but quite firmly, easing him out of 
it. It’s not only for herself, either. I do really 
believe, and I’m not one to sentimentalise, am If 
that she quite honestly believes that it’s all for his 
good: so there’s balm for your maternal heart! 
Darlingest, the houses they go to! If I’d suggested 
one of them a year ago to Evelyn he’d have thought 
me stark, staring mad! Susan Dakin’s and a score 
of others, and VS! Oh yes, we’ve had a visit! I 



An Unknown Quantity 343 

invited them in the early autumn and got snubbed 
for my trouble by Evelyn—she’d never have done it: 
but that’s all over now under the new r^ime, and 
Wilton Street has been honoured! Wonderfuller 
still, we^ve been to Church Street, this very last 
week as ever was: such an evening, too! Joyce was 
a bit nervous, of course, but she carried it oft 
amazingly well, all things considered, and we had 
all the right knives and forks, and an extra woman 
to wait. 

“Then too, what an eye for ‘country’ your 
daughter-in-law has got! There’s quite an ‘affaire’ 
afoot with Mr. Clement Dowsing; you know the man 
I mean. We took you to see one of his plays the last 
time you were in London, an affected, harmless, 
smart, little thing, bienvenu everywhere, and with an 
income—well, it would keep us in affluence for at 
least two years! Now don’t drop your spectacles 
again, mother darling, for I assure you it’s the most 
respectable liaison in Town: Joyce has no sort of 
use for that kind of thing, she’s far too respectable 
at heart, and, as I said before, she likes her hus¬ 
band and knows as well as I do that she can get 
everything she wants without sending her bonnet 
flying. Oh, it’s all for Evelyn mind you, only—well, 
man and wife are still, in some circles, one, 

“Of course the cream of the whole joke is Evelyn! 
Can you put your motherly prejudices on one side 
for a moment and regard Evelyn as a joke? Per¬ 
haps you can’t, for, after all, it’s a long time since 
you saw him from day to day, at least in the way 
that I have. Still it is a joke and a warning too, 
for your especial benefit and the enlistment of your 
tact when next you meet him. You see, the darling 



344 An Unknown Quantity 

boy behaves as if it were all his doing, and, so far 
as I can see, believes it too! Wasn't he 'forming' 
her so busily, even at Stonechurchl The little 
nobody, raised miraculously to his level? and now 
she brings out of a corner her little mould and— 
pours him in! Can you imagine his feelings?— 
possibly, but you can’t have the faintest idea of his 
behaviour until you see him. Evelyn, white waist- 
coated and top-hatted—though he did go to Susan's 
in tweeds, but that was very early on—with an air 
of bringing out a carefully matured wine and un¬ 
corking it for the company! I confess I never liked 
him so well before, though he is my own brother, 
for I never saw him so human. He had to do it, 
naturally, in self-defence, but I don't think he real¬ 
ises that. He's got no doubts about what he's done, 
trained a wife and brought her 'out,' and intro¬ 
duced her to all the 'nice' people! Oh, how he's 
enjoying himself! Imagine it, Evelyn, our young 
'Intellectual' with serious theories about art, writing 
novels for Chelsea and Bloomsbury, turned sud¬ 
denly into the young lion, roaring in quite the right 
way, and revelling in it! Isn't it all exactly what 
you've wanted? Well then, thank Joyce, but very, 
very privately. He doesn't pretend, any longer, not 
to like it, he can't, when one comes to think of it; 
still, it is rather surprising, the parties and the 
dinners, and the flattery. That’s, of course, how 
she did it, but doing it's nothing compared to keep¬ 
ing it going, and she's wonderful there—you see I 
can't help coming back to her. She subscribes, 
without reservations, to his version of the case, helps 
him to tie the bandage round his own eyes, and 
never lets him feel the guiding hand; shows him 



An Unknown Quantity 345 

nothing but the mouse-like, adoring wife. She’s 
clever enough for anything—and I do like her, so, 
you see, I’m not as ill-natured as you think me, ma 
mere. I’ve always loved the theatre, haven’t I? and 
I do appreciate a good comedy. . . . ” 

For Freddie’s ears she added a spoken postscript. 
^‘I don’t believe he’s a bit in love with her now,” 
she said. ‘ ‘ He was, of course, and he will be again. 
At least, he’ll find that he can’t get along without 
her, and that, I suppose, is the same thing!” 

Ill 

It had been agreed that, in accordance with an un¬ 
broken family precedent, Joyce and Evelyn should 
spend Christmas at Stonechurch, but Mrs. Rendle’s 
unexpected departure, under doctor’s orders, for the 
Riviera, rendered the plan impossible of fulfilment 
and consequently delayed by, as it turned out, a few 
weeks, certain developments destined to influence 
profoundly the future of at least one of the persons 
with whom this story is concerned. 

Evelyn did not resent the enforced stay in Town. 
For the last fortnight he had been, more than ever, 
absorbed in his work. Meetings with Dowsing in¬ 
creased in number. For whole mornings the two 
men would be closeted together, sometimes in the lat¬ 
ter’s Knightsbridge flat, more often in the study at 
Church Street, and even before his mother’s sudden 
decision Evelyn had found himself regretting a 
promise that had been given unthinkingly so many 
months before. When, therefore, the letter from 
Stonechurch arrived, he pushed it across to his wife 
with a sigh of relief. 


346 An Unknown Quantity 

That ^11 give me a chance to get the whole busi¬ 
ness off my hands/^ he said. 

Joyce’s reception of the news was surprising. 

“You don’t seem to think of me at all,” she re¬ 
plied. “I’d been looking forward to the change, and 
now, I suppose, we’ve got to stick here for months!” 

The note of real bitterness in her voice was so un¬ 
usual that he looked up at her quickly. 

“My dear girl, it’s only a matter of a week or so: 
once this is all over we’ll go away if you like. I’d 
no idea you were so keen.” 

“Of course you didn’t, because you never think of 
anything but your work. If you were cooped up all 
day trying to run a house on one servant, you’d want 
a holiday sometimes!” 

The injustice of the charge stung him. She must 
be overdone, he thought, and remembered, suddenly, 
other symptoms of ill-health lately apparent but, till 
now, unconsidered, strange bursts of weeping, tits of 
nervous irritability. The present mood was so un¬ 
like her that he suggested a doctor, but she flashed 
out in anger at the proposal, and the first shock of 
surprise faded with his renewed withdrawal into the 
interest of his work. Rather than risk disturbance, 
indeed, he avoided being alone with her except at 
meals, and, after a while, their lives pursued again a 
course comparatively placid. 

On New Year’s Day he returned later than usual 
to dinner. The day had been one of bitter east wind 
and driving sleet, a combination quite sufficient to 
account for his obvious ill-humour. The meal passed 
in a silence broken only by his occasional outbursts 
of impatience and complaint, which her carefully 
maintained air of long-suffering endurance only 


An Unknown Quantity 347 

served to accentuate. As soon as it was finished he 
left her without a word and she heard the study door 
close behind him. 

An hour later he joined her in their little drawing¬ 
room. She was seated before the discomfort of a 
half-hearted fire that, at intervals, belched gusts of 
smoke into the room, listening idly to the sound of 
the rattling windows and the patter of hail against 
the panes. At the noise of the opening door she 
turned her head. He came in without a word and 
sat down in the chair opposite hers, leaning forward 
to warm his hands at the uncomfortable hearth. A 
fragment of coal leapt out on to the carpet and he 
reached for the tongs, absent-mindedly, to put it 
back. The clatter of the irons, as he replaced them, 
seemed to break the spell of his silence. He dusted 
his hands together and flung himself back, arms 
hanging, a picture of despondency. 

‘‘Well,’’ he said at length, “I’m ready to go away 
as soon as you like. The sooner and the farther the 
better: anywhere’s preferable to this poisonous 
city! ’ ’ 

Her heart jumped expectantly. 

“I thought your work wouldn’t be finished for an¬ 
other month?” she queried. 

“It’s finished now as far as I am concerned.” 

“Oh, I am glad!” 

There was another silence, broken at last by his 
low, almost expressionless, tones. 

“I’ve told Dowsing I’m not going on.” 

‘ ‘ Evelyn! ’ ’ 

After a moment she added: “But I thought every¬ 
thing was working out so well?” 

He laughed drily and got up from his chair. 


348 An Unknown Quantity 

only what IVe been expecting all along,’’ he 
said. ‘^He wants me to make changes and, as I told 
you before, that’s a thing I won’t do.” 

‘‘Is it quite impossible? Are the changes so very 
important?” 

“Vital.” 

The irritability of which she had been increasingly 
conscious of late weUed up almost irresistibly, but 
she fought it down. Now, if ever, she must tread 
warily, touch him only with delicate, tactful hands. 
When next she spoke it was on a note of gentleness. 

“You poor dear, what a disappointment!” 

“It’s not altogether a surprise.” 

“But you are disappointed,” she insisted, “of 
course you are.” 

“I resent the waste of time naturally, but it’s my 
fault. I was a fool ever to take it on. As it is I shall 
have to undo most of what I’ve done before the 
book’s fit for publication.” 

She looked up at him as he stood, legs apart, be¬ 
fore the fire. 

“Would it have meant a lot of money?” she 
asked almost timidly. “I mean,” she added hastily, 
“if he hadn’t wanted the changes?” 

Evelyn started to pace up and down the room. 

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” he said 
fiercely, “it mustn’t have, I won’t let a thing like 
that influence me.” 

He raised his voice on the words as though, in 
some obscure way, he were trying to reassure him¬ 
self. 

“Oh, but of course you mustn’t, I’m sure you did 
quite right, but—but it would, wouldn’t it?” 

He turned and regarded her for a moment, then 


An Unknown Quantity 349 

with a wry smile, “He offered me three hundred 
pounds for the serial rights, if you must know,” he 
said. 

“And youVe told him quite definitely that you 
won’t agree!” 

“All but, I’ve got to write to him to-night.” 

“Oh, if only-!” she gazed into the fire as she 

spoke. “But of course you can’t, I see that, but 
just now: three hundred pounds!” she whispered as 
though to herself. 

He strode over to her side and stood looking down 
at her. 

“Just now!” he questioned; “I don’t understand, 
Joyce. Don’t I give you enough!—^we’re not in 
debt!” 

She said nothing, her eyes still on the flickering 
grate. There was a hard note in his voice that she 
had never heard before as he continued: 

“I see what it is, we’ve been doing too much! I 
half suspected it. That ridiculous dinner of ours, oh, 
I ought to have put my foot down! But, Joyce, you 
told me that you’d managed on your housekeeping 
money. Why did you say that if it wasn’t true ! ’ ’ 

She turned her head with a little sob and seized 
his hands. 

“Oh, Evelyn, it isn’t that!” she cried, and buried 
her face against him. He took a step back and she 
flung herself sobbing, head in her folded arms, 
against the back of the chair. 

“Not that!” he said, “then what is it!” 

Choking down her grief she showed him her face, 
eyes big with tears. 

“Not that!” he repeated. 



350 An Unknown Quantity 

‘‘Evelyn!’^ slie cried, can’t you see, can’t you un¬ 
derstand?” 

For a moment her natural shyness fought with her 
sense of the dramatic, then, with a sudden move¬ 
ment, she flung out her arms and caught his hands 
again. 

‘‘My dear,” she whispered, “—I’m going to have 
a baby! ’ ’ and pulled him to her. 

For full half a minute he stood as though dazed. 
A gust of wind roared down the chimney, sending a 
cloud of smoke into the room; in the street a motor- 
van rumbled by, shaking the house. He heard noth¬ 
ing but the ticking of the small clock on the mantel¬ 
piece and the choked sobbing of his wife. Then, in a 
flash, he was on his knees beside her. 

“My dear, my dear,” he murmured, “what a beast 
I’ve been!” 

He put his arms about her and hid his face in her 
hair. 

“How selfish!” he whispered. “You poor, poor 
little thing, no wonder you were tired and ill, and I— 
I thought it was—oh, I don’t know what I thought it 
was, I just didn’t think at all!” 

Still she sobbed passionately; her face pressed to 
his coat. He gazed straight before him while, with 
his hand, he stroked her shoulder. 

“Knowing it all the time, and telling nobody!” 
he said. “My poor darling, how you must have suf¬ 
fered! If only we’d been at Stonechurch for Christ¬ 
mas I should have known; mother would have 
guessed; you’d have told her?” 

She made a little inarticulate noise of assent. 

Little by little her sobbing grew less violent, but 
still she kept her face hidden. They were silent now 


An Unknown Quantity 351 

together, clinging like two children to one another. 
It was as though the first weeks of their married life 
had come again and he were holding her, possessing, 
protecting, to his breast. At last he spoke. 

^‘It never occurred to me. I must have known it 
was a possibility, but somehow, that such a thing 
should happen to us !—it all seemed so remote, some¬ 
thing at the back of my mind perhaps, to be faced— 
oh, in some far, far, distant future. I suppose men 
are like that, Joyce: what brutes, what clods 

She raised her face to look at him. 

“Are you gladT’ she asked. 

For answer he crushed her to him and kissed her 
lips. 

“My dear, my dear,’^ he said. 

Unnoticed by either of them the windows rattled 
and stray gusts of rain hissed and sizzled on the 
coals. Time and space dropped from them like loos¬ 
ened clothes and lay unheeded about their feet. To¬ 
gether they gazed, for the first time, over the spread¬ 
ing prospect of a new reality. 

Slowly the ecstasy passed and the world, pink with 
reflected glory, drew round them once again. 

“Why,’’ he asked suddenly, “didn’t you tell me 
before?” 

“I thought it would worry you: I thought it would 
interfere with your work.” 

“My work!” he almost angrily cried, “as though 
that could count in comparison! My work,” he re¬ 
peated as though the words brought back some mem¬ 
ory half buried in the past, “of course, three hun¬ 
dred pounds, I see now!” 

“I oughtn’t to have spoken now, not to-night.” 

“Ah, don’t hurt me like that! You’ll want things, 


352 An Unknown Quantity 

all sorts of things, things I could give you with the 
money!’’ 

‘‘Evelyn, we’ll manage: I’m sure we can.” 

“When I can do that for you?” 

‘ ‘ But you mustn’t 1 ” 

He continued as though he had not heard her. 

“Thank heaven, that letter’s not written yet!” 

“You hate it, Evelyn; you think it’s doing some¬ 
thing wrong, I know you do.” 

“I love you,” he replied simply. 

She made no further protest, but laid her head 
upon his shoulder and remained so for a while, un¬ 
stirring. At length, still looking straight before her, 
she smiled. 

“Wlien it’s all over,” she whispered, “you’ll be 
able to write exactly as you want to, won’t you?” 

“Darling,” he said, “when it’s all over, what does 
it matter if I never write again?” 

At that moment the triumph she had planned so 
carefully looked, somehow, poor and tarnished. 


THE SIXTEENTH CHAPTER 


I 

E VELYN’S son was born in the first week of 
June, and his mother, who had returned from 
France a fortnight earlier, travelled post-haste to 
Chelsea to take charge, 

Rachel’s admiration for her sister-in-law was ma¬ 
terially increased by the news of the event. 

“So clever of her,” she said to Freddie, “to wait 
until Mamma was back, and such excellent taste not 
to harass her by a premature recall. It really is 
wonderful to be able to observe the high manners in 
so intimate an affair! Still, converts are always just 
a little bit extreme, aren’t they? and I can’t deny 
that dear Joyce has studied hard! ’ ’ 

Mrs. Rendle was, naturally, far too much occupied 
with the all-important details of her self-imposed 
duty to spare time or thought for anything outside 
the pressing anxieties of the moment. She arrived 
from Stonechurch with a nurse of advanced years 
and manifest competence in her train, and no amount 
of argument from her son could induce her to dis¬ 
pense with the services of this overpowering female. 

“But mother, darling!” he protested, “I’ve ar¬ 
ranged everything, really I have, and I’ve engaged a 
nurse already.” 

Very delicately but with the greatest firmness she 
expressed complete disbelief in his powers. 

353 


354 An Unknown Quantity 

^‘Eacliel saw her/’ he pleaded in final exaspera¬ 
tion: sure she’s all right.” 

Say what he might, however, his mother’s de¬ 
termination was unshakable. Her decision was proof 
against all argument. 

“Dear boy,” she said, “you must allow me to 
know best about these things. Fraser’s almost like 
one of the family. She was with me when both you 
and Eachel were born, and really I shouldn’t feel at 
all comfortable about Joyce without her”—the 
words seemed to imply that some subtle scandal 
might attach to the birth of Evelyn’s heir in Fraser’s 
absence—“besides,” she added, “she’d be deeply 
hurt, I know, if anybody else was engaged, so please 
don’t let us have any more discussion.” 

There was no more discussion. Mrs. Eendle, with 
secret and incredible tact, satisfied the disappointed 
claims of her son’s hireling, and Fraser was in¬ 
stalled, under the watchful eyes of her mistress, in 
complete authority. 

Evelyn, in retreat, even went so far as to carry 
his woes to Wilton Street. 

“I’ve never seen mother like that before,” he said. 

Eachel was unsympathetic. 

“Of course you haven’t; you’ve never given her 
the chance before. It’s quite natural, you know. 
You cheated her out of your wedding and she’s mak¬ 
ing it up to herself now. The old darling, how she 
must be enjoying it all!” 

“She’s practically turned me out of the house; 
I’ve no idea what’s going on there!” 

“Evelyn, for Heaven’s sake don’t get hysterical! 
You talk as though you suspected foul play! Haven’t 
you got a club you can go to?” 



An Unknown Quantity 355 

'‘Of course I haven’t, or I should go there!” 

"Well, don’t snap my head otf; you ought to 
have. ’ ’ 

"Clement’s put me up for ‘Biffins,’ but I don’t 
know when I shall get in. ’ ’ 

"Until that happy day I’ll have the spare room 
padded and you can come and rave here as much as 
you please. Better still, why not let Freddie teach 
you golf ? I gather from him that it’s extremely ab¬ 
sorbing.” 

To her^ surprise almost as much as to his own 
Evelyn jumped at the suggestion. 

"By Jove!” he exclaimed, "I wonder whether he 
would! ’ ’ 

***** 

With Fraser triumphantly in charge, and the 
anxieties of the first few weeks safely met and over¬ 
come, Mrs. Kendle allowed herself to contemplate, at 
leisure, a wider prospect. 

"I know it must be a nuisance for you to have an 
old woman about the house, my dear,” she said to 
her son, "but I want you to put up with me for a 
little while longer. Joyce has been wonderful, but 
it’s bound to be some time before she’s strong 
enough to be moved, and I don’t want to go until I 
can take her and the child down to Stonechurch with 
me.” 

In reply to Evelyn’s kiss and the words that ac¬ 
companied it she smiled happily. 

"Dear boy, you mustn’t talk like that; I can’t be 
thanked for loving you both, now, can I? And what 
I’ve done has been done from love. It will be such 
a pleasure for me to watch your happiness and to 
know your friends.” 


356 An Unknown Quantity 

As the life of the Church Street household gradu¬ 
ally returned to its normal level she allowed her 
eyes, kind and loving as ever but shadowed, despite 
herself, by a faint anxiety, to explore its every cor¬ 
ner. The unhurried scrutiny seemed completely to 
reassure her lurking doubts, and one afternoon, 
when Evelyn was out and Joyce safe in Fraser’s 
care, she asked Rachel to tea in order to communi¬ 
cate her conclusions. 

‘‘My dear,” she said, as her daughter drew on her 
gloves preparatory to departure, “they’re as happy 
as possible. You’ve no idea what a relief it is to 
me.” 

“But mother, darling, didn’t I tell you?” 

“I expect you meant to, but your letters worried 
me dreadfully.” 

Rachel laughed. “Such is my reward for trying 
to be the bearer of good tidings! Oh dear, what sins 
we commit in ignorance!” 

“You’ve got such a funny way of putting things. 
I very nearly came home a month earlier than I 
meant to.” 

“You old goose I And now you see I was right?” 

“I see that I was right!” 

“Oh, you wicked old woman! You know you had 
your doubts. Weren’t you quite fierce with me when 
you heard about it first?” 

Her mother flushed. “Rachel, it’s not kind of you 
to remind me of that!” she said, but a moment later 
she smiled. “You’re right, my dear, and I’m sorry. 
You see, I didn’t know her then. As soon as I saw 
her I hnew that she loved him, and that was all I 
cared about.” 

“I told you that too, you know.” 


An Unknown Quantity 357 

‘‘And, Kachel—I like that Mr. Dowsing. Evelyn 
brought him to see me the other day and he was 
charming. So few young men are charming to old 
women nowadays.’’ 

“Vanity! So you approve of him because he was 
nice to you?” 

‘ ‘ Oh, but he’s devoted to Evelyn 1 ’ ’ her mother re¬ 
plied. 

To her daughter-in-law she was even more demon¬ 
strative. One afternoon early in the month, when 
Fraser had gone out, she was sitting with her needle¬ 
work by the open window of Joyce’s room. Against 
the fresh, brief greenery of the London plane-trees, 
a chestnut stretched a heavy arm of blossom: the 
room was full of light and the scent of young things 
growing. Suddenly a whisper called her to the bed. 

“Why, child, I thought you were asleep,” she 
smiled. 

Joyce looked up at her with troubled eyes and 
caught her hand. Perhaps the sense of pervading 
summer shamed her with the soiled memory of a 
petty triumph. 

“I’ve been lying here watching you such a long 
time,” she said. 

“You mustn’t talk, dear; try to sleep.” 

“I’ve been wondering.” 

There was silence for a minute, but the older 
woman felt the hand on hers tighten its grasp. The 
whisper came again, stronger this time. 

“You do think he’s happy?” 

‘ ‘ My dear, dear child, he’s so happy that it shines 
from his face and sounds in every word he says. 
He’s happier than I’ve ever seen him, he’s as happy 
as it’s been my lifelong hope he should be. I’ve 


358 An Unknown Quantity 

never seen him like it in his life before; why, he’s 
a different person.” 

Joyce closed her eyes and smiled. For her, at 
that moment, there was no lurking irony in the last 
words. 


II 

The birth of the Heretic had considerably pre¬ 
ceded that of Evelyn’s child, and when the latter 
event occurred two long instalments of “FEET OF 
CLAY” had already appeared. Dowsing’s delight 
was almost childish. He had wound up his toy and 
was now on all fours to watch it “work.” It was 
difficult, however, to be irritated with him for long, 
since his enthusiastic congratulations embraced, not 
only himself, but everybody concerned directly or 
indirectly in the venture. To Evel^m he was ecstatic. 

“You’ve done it!” he cried over some more than 
usuall}^ favourable press notice, or fanned to a white 
heat of excitement by the news of an unexpectedly 
large increase in their circulation. 

“I knew you would, didn’t I always say so? My 
dear boy, I’m nothing to what you’re going to be!” 
and with a laugh he added, “ I do really believe that 
poor Henry is quite perturbed.” 

By enlisting thus openly under the banner of the 
still influential playv^right, and flying, with so con¬ 
vincing an air of bravado, his pennon in the shadow 
of those flaunting, billowing folds, Evelyn had in¬ 
deed “done it,” as he very soon had occasion to 
realise. For months the venture had been heralded, 
and the baby knight, plumed and beribboned with a 
gay impertinence, had bowed his entrance to an 


An Unknown Quantity 359 

audience respectably agog. That the storm of ap¬ 
plause had any more definite object than the ‘‘side’’ 
of which he was a member, Evelyn did not realise 
until the first full, sweet notes of approbation came 
to him, at second hand indeed, but still flattering, in 
a letter from his agents. With an air of greater 
subservience than usual Messrs. Hope, Cosser and 
Norris prayed for an interview “at his earliest con¬ 
venience,” for the purpose of “discussing future 
plans.” 

It was with feelings, therefore, vividly remini¬ 
scent of those that had animated him almost ex¬ 
actly a year previously, that he found himself, a 
few days later, treading the uneven cobbles of 
Covent Garden. He had, of course, in the interval, 
paid an occasional visit to Mr. Norris, but never, 
since the preceding spring, had he made the journey 
with so clear a sensation of pursuing a fateful path. 
It may be that casting, as he did, a backward glance 
over the months just past, he was led to confuse the 
sequence of emotions that had filled them. Certainly 
he could now have sworn that on that well-remem¬ 
bered day time had seemed pregnant with great 
events, and, as though to bear witness to the justice 
of his retrospect, the sight of the grey stucco office 
brought back to him, thronging as never before, easy 
memories of Joyce and of the halting, timid delights 
of his courtship. 

The same small boy, haughty no longer, but smil¬ 
ingly respectful, showed him up the well-remem¬ 
bered stairs to the glazed door at sight of which his 
heart jumped still with reminiscent rapture. So 
strong was his sense of Time’s unreality that he 
hesitated a moment before turning the handle in re- 


360 An Unknown Quantity 

sponse to the clear ^‘come in’’ of a female voice. 
The room, when after a moment’s delay he entered 
it, was unchanged. The gallery of distinguished 
portraits still patronised it with smiles of aloof su¬ 
periority, the typewriter in the window still rattled, 
and behind it, as a year before, sat a woman. He 
turned to look at her with, in spite of reason, a sense 
of overpowering expectation. As he looked the 
iridescent bubble of romantic retrospect shimmered, 
broke, and vanished. In a flash the present, prosaic 
but for a still lurking intimation of fateful possibili¬ 
ties, closed round him. Joyce’s former employer 
had learned, obviously, from experience, and his 
‘‘secretary” now was as plainly efficient as she was 
unalluring. She rose at Evelyn’s entrance, a vision 
of high, starched collar, horn-rimmed spectacles, and 
paper cuff-protectors, and with a curt, almost hos¬ 
tile, “Wait here, please,” vanished through the 
farther door. 

He was kept waiting, this time, but a bare two min¬ 
utes, and Mr. Norris, shining with affability, came 
forward to the threshold to welcome him. 

“Good morning, good morning, Mr. Kendle,” he 
exclaimed. ‘ ‘ I fear you have been kept waiting; no ? 
Well that’s very kind of you, I’m sure; come in, 
please.” Then more pompously, “I shall be en¬ 
gaged for the next half-hour. Miss”—for one wild 
moment Evelyn half expected him to say “Linnet” 
—“Miss Jowles.” 

The interview consisted for the most part of a 
monologue by Mr. Norris, the pinkness of whose 
head shone resplendent with humility and good- 
humour. 

“Ah, Mr. Kendle,” he said, “that was a wicked 


An Unknown Quantity 361 

trick of yours!’’ He patted a copy of the Heretic 
lying open upon his table. ‘‘A little secret, eh?— 
we had no idea, not a glimmer. Ah, please, please, 
not a word, my dear sir, not a word!” as Evelyn at¬ 
tempted an embarrassed explanation, understand 
perfectly, that was only my little joke! Mr. 
Dowsing is irresistible, and you preferred to deal 
direct: never mind, never mind, we must make up for 
lost time!” He paused with an air of seeking dili¬ 
gently for words. ‘ A^ou see,” he continued, ‘‘your 
new work is a little—how shall I put it?—a little un¬ 
expected. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, very pleas¬ 
antly so, delightfully so! If you will excuse a man 
who has been connected with literature for the last 
thirty years, intimately connected, it shows a won¬ 
derful maturity, it is, pardon the term, highly mar¬ 
ketable, an extremely valuable proposition!” He 
leant forward, accentuating his words with a podgy 
forefinger. “It is fortunate, as it turns out, that no 
arrangement was made about the book before its ap¬ 
pearance here”: the finger pounced upon the spread 
pages of the Heretic. This enhances its value e-nor- 
mously! I don’t say that we might not have been 
in a position to place the serial rights more advan¬ 
tageously, still, what’s done is done, and I can assure 
you that the present position is admirable. I have 
had inquiries already, this week, from Willis and 
Edmunds, Cator, and Thresham—Thresham, b}^ the 
by, makes a definite and extremely encouraging offer 
—and this very morning van Klaw of New York 
cabled me for American terms. Now, if you take my 
advice,” he pulled some papers towards him and 
rummaged among them, “Ah, here now,” he said 
at last, “this is Thresham’s letter; you see he wants 


362 An Unknown Quantity 

a contract for the next three on increasingly re¬ 
munerative terms. An excellent firm, a first-rate 
firm; there are one or two minor points, as you will 
notice, but I don^t anticipate the slightest difficulty, 
not the slightest.’’ 

For the next ten minutes technicalities rattled like 
hail round Evelyn’s head. Still half dazed he found 
himself assenting to his companion’s suggestions, 
conscious of little save that a host of comparatively 
unknown people seemed to be offering him large 
sums of money for possible books that did not, at 
present, exist even in the shadowiest outline. 

‘‘And now how about short stories?” continued 
the voice with scarcely a pause: “you have? Ex¬ 
cellent!” Again the room seemed to reverberate a 
storm of words—“America—huge demand—phe¬ 
nomenal prices—sure you’ll be satisfied.” 

At length Mr. Norris rose. 

‘ ‘ Then you will leave everything in my hands, Mr. 
Eendle?” he said, and added, “You can, of course, 
rely upon my doing my very best. All subsidiary 
rights, cinema, translation, and the like, can, I feel 
convinced, be disposed of to the very best advantage. 
If you’ll allow me to say so, it is a real pleasure to 
act for you. Some authors are so—so—well, exi¬ 
gent, if you understand me. Good morning, and 
any time of course—oh, by the by, there is some¬ 
thing I’d almost forgotten, just a little semi-personal 
matter, Mr. Eendle: if you could spare me a photo¬ 
graph, you see it is our tradition to be on terms of 
real friendship with our clients. Don’t, please, put 
yourself out in the matter, but if you could find 
something—a thousand thanks, Mr. Eendle, good 
morning!” 


An Unknown Quantity 363 

Thus was the seal set to success. 

As Evelyn walked westward the chaos of his 
thought subsided gradually, leaving him conscious 
only of a rare elation. Piccadilly, in the light of the 
summer afternoon, intoxicated him, every woman 
upon the pavement seemed to him beautiful, every 
man distinguished, and not for a moment did he 
wish to be other than he was. 

At Apsley House he turned into Hyde Park and 
whistled to himself under the delicious freedom of 
the trees. The Serpentine, shaken into golden 
ripples, lapped idly at the heavy boats that thronged 
it. From the far bank drifted the cries of naked 
urchins bathing. Just beyond the powder magazine 
he came on a familiar lounging figure, leaning 
against the eastern parapet of the bridge, contem¬ 
plating lazily the white towers of Westminster that 
glimmered above the still fresh green of the trees. 

At his cheerful greeting Beverley looked up. 

‘‘My dear Evelyn!’’ he said, “from the ecstasy 
in your face one might suppose that you had just 
signed away your soul! ’ ’ 

“Isn’t a day like this enough to make anyone feel 
drunk 1 ’ ’ 

“I was in process of making the depressing reflec¬ 
tion that the sensations aroused in the human breast 
by Spring are described with terrifying accuracy 
and appalling facility by the English lyric poets.” 

“Ass!” 

Together they leaned on the parapet in silence. 
After a while Beverley turned, stretched his arms 
and yawned. 

“I shall return to my garret,” he said, “if one is 
temperamentally incapable of sentimentality, June 


364 An Unknown Quantity 

is the most devastating month of the year. By the 
by/’ he added, haven’t congratulated you on 
your new venture. I always said you’d become a 
successful novelist. I don’t as a rule believe in 
proverbs, but I’m beginning to think that it is the 
first step, after all, that counts.” 

Stirred by something more than usually desolate 
in his friend’s appearance, Evelyn was conscious of 
a sudden pang. 

‘‘My dear Liell,” he said, “you ought to get mar¬ 
ried ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Ah no, I so much prefer pondering the marriages 
of my friends. Besides, as I’ve just said, you are 
converting me to a belief in proverbs!” with which 
cryptic remark he shambled across the road into 
Kensington Gardens. 

“Poor old Liell!” Evelyn reflected as he continued 
his homeward way. Then, as though the thought 
had suggested another, “Of course I can take my 
own road when I like,” he added to himself on a note 
of challenging bravado, and, finally, aloud, “My 
God! what a prig I used to be!” 


Ill 

At the beginning of July, after first discussing 
every possible aspect of the plan with Fraser, Mrs. 
Eendle decided that the journey into Berkshire 
might safely be made. It was settled, therefore, that 
she, together with Joyce, Evelyn, the absurdly 
shapeless infant, and the still overwhelming nurse, 
should, “on the first really settled day,” migrate to 
Stonechurch, where at least she could be sure that 


An Unknown Quantity 365 

the air was pare and the milk unadulterated, where, 
moreover, her husband must be pining—the euphem¬ 
ism was her own—for the first glimpse of his grand¬ 
son. At the last moment Evelyn pleaded for the per¬ 
sonal respite of a week. 

“I must get this work off my hands first,’’ he ex¬ 
plained. ‘‘I thought it would have been all done 
with by now, but there have been delays. ’ ’ 

His mother looked gravely at him, as though he 
had just confessed the symptoms of a fatal illness. 

‘‘My dear boy, you mustn’t work too hard,” she 
gently protested. “You look quite run down as it is, 
doesn’t he, Joyce?” 

Joyce agreed with alacrity. “He must have a 
change,” she said. “He hasn’t had a real holiday 
for almost a year,” adding with sudden earnestness 
so entirely out of proportion to its cause that one 
might have fancied it the outcome of a sense, but 
vaguely defined, of guilt, “Oh, Evelyn, must you 
really stay?” 

“It’ll only be for five days,” he reassured her, 
ignoring the special note in her voice, “just a scrap 
of breadwinning and then a wonderful rest. This 
play, you know, I must fix it up before I leave 
Town. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Kendle, still undefeated, brandished a new 
argument. 

“But I’m certain you could work much better in 
the country: you could have the gun-room quite to 
yourself.” 

His determination was unshakable. 

“You old worrier,” he said laughingly, kissing 
her forehead, “It can’t be done. I’ve got a lot to 


I 


366 An Unknown Quantity 

talk over with Clement, and that can’t be managed 
from a gun-room sixty miles away!” 

A month earlier Dowsing had asked him whether 
he had ever thought of writing for the theatre, and 
a discussion, starting from that question, had re¬ 
sulted in Evelyn’s promise to look out and show to 
his friend ‘‘an old thing” which, he said, had lain 
about untouched in his drawer for months. The 
“old thing” in question turned out to be no other 
than the three-act comedy, all but completed, that 
he had undertaken originally at the instigation of 
Jack Biscoe. The proposed play-house had never, 
of course, shown any signs of existing outside the 
fertile imagination of its projector, and for at least 
half a year no more had been heard of it. This, his 
sole essay in the drama, Evelyn extracted, therefore, 
from a pile of old manuscript, dusted, read, and 
showed to Dowsing, who at once pronounced it ‘ ‘ ex¬ 
cellent material to work on.” 

“Now’s the time,” he counselled, “strike while 
the iron’s hot, and I’ll do all in my power to help.” 

More in order to occupy his mind than for any 
other reason, Evelyn agreed to take up the unfin¬ 
ished work. It was the period of his greatest anxiety 
about Joyce, shortly after his visit to Wilton Street 
already recorded, and he felt that above all things, 
he needed, in addition to elementary golf which, as 
demonstrated by his brother-in-law, was certainly 
not sufficient, some absorbing, intellectual diversion. 
To plan any new original work at a time of such 
emotional tension, he found impossible, but the idea 
of “working up” this old play, long laid aside, ap¬ 
pealed to him. 

He set himself to the task with feverish intensity 


An Unknown Quantity 367 

and, encouraged by Dowsing, who watched over him 
at every stage with enthusiastic solicitude, found, 
after a while, his old interest in the scheme revive. 
By the date of his wife’s departure for Stonechurch 
the main part of the work of revision had been com¬ 
pleted. A few small points alone remained for 
settlement, and it was to clear these out of his way 
that he insisted upon the necessity of remaining 
some few days longer in London. 

By the following Monday he found that his labours 
were, in every detail, completed, and looked forward 
with a sigh of real relief to starting next day for 
Berkshire. Since the beginning of the previous week 
he had been too busy to feel lonely, but now that 
everything had been settled, and his papers tidied 
and locked away, the depressing sense invaded him, 
as he wandered about the echoing house already 
swathed in dust-sheets, of being utterly at a loose 
end.” That evening, therefore, he dressed early, in¬ 
tending after his solitary meal to spend the early 
hours of the night at a music-hall. 

With this object he left the house shortly before 
eight and started to walk eastward along the King’s 
Koad. By the time, however, that he reached Sloane 
Square his mood had changed. The summer eve¬ 
ning was warm and alluring. He stood still for a 
moment as though debating some point with himself, 
then turning sharply to the right he crossed the road 
and walked quickly southward, past the barracks, 
past the gardens of the Eoyal Hospital, to the Em¬ 
bankment. 

The tide was ebbing fast and, for a while, he 
stood gazing absent-mindedly at the narrow, 
shrunken stream, and the miles of uncovered mud 


368 An Unknown Quantity 

which the reflected light of sunset touched to an 
iridescent glow. With eyes still upon the river he 
continued his walk. Overhead the zenith was still 
blue, and ahead, behind the sturdy silhouette of the 
power station a sweep of brightest green closed the 
shining westward view. Even as he looked an early 
star shone out with the flickering uncertainty of a 
newly kindled lamp. From Battersea, across the 
trees, a fresh wind blew, ruffling the slow smoothness 
of the stream, and here and there, on barges and 
above the spidery landing-stages, a few lights 
warmly gleamed. From this very point he had, 
many a time, watched the unfolding and the fading 
of quiet beauty, but to-night the scene sounded a 
new note of poignancy. A gentle sense of melan¬ 
choly stole over him, too sweet for regret, too ex¬ 
quisite for tears, lapping like the ripples at his feet 
the strong-built walls of his security. 

At the end of Oakley Street he stopped again and 
was so lost in reverie that he did not hear his name 
spoken suddenly from behind. 

“Eendle,’^ said the voice again, this time with a 
quaver of uncertainty. 

He looked up with a start and peered into the gath¬ 
ering dusk: then, ^‘Stephen!’’ he cried. 

thought it was you,’’ Langley replied, ‘‘but I 
wasn’t sure. ^Are you coming along to Jimmy’s?” 

“Jimmy’s? By Jove, it’s Monday, isn’t it? I’d 
quite forgotten!” 

“Come along, I’m going.” 

“It’s such ages since I’ve been near the studio.” 

“All the more reason then: do come.” 

For a moment longer Evelyn hesitated, but some¬ 
thing in his mood, in the sentimental appeal of the 


An Unknown Quantity 369 

evening, overcame liis momentary and, at the best, 
but half-hearted scruples. After all it was too late 
for a theatre now, and he had nothing to do. 

‘ ‘ Right you are! ’ ’ he said. 

They walked the short distance in almost complete 
silence. As they approached the remembered door 
and heard the accustomed sound of voices through 
the open window Evelyn felt his spirits rise. It was 
too bad, he reflected, to have kept away so long. 
Memories of the old, happy companionship swept 
over him. Well, to-night should be the beginning 
of a new epoch, he wouldnT let work interfere in 
future, as he had done in the months immediately be¬ 
hind him, with old friendships. 

Jimmy welcomed him with arms literally open. 

‘‘I say, this is topping!” he cried, and dashed 
back into the room with a shout of ‘ ‘ Here ’s Evelyn! ’ ’ 

They followed him into the smoky glare of the 
studio, and in the stimulating atmosphere Stephen 
became talkative. 

‘‘I found him outside,” he explained, ^alone and 
palely loitering.’ ” 

A familiar voice came mockingly from out of a 
distant corner. 

‘‘Dear me, Stephen, does the mere shadow of re¬ 
spectability compel you to quote Keats?” 

Evelyn turned at the words. “Good evening, 
‘Bunny,’ ” he called. 

“Good evening—Mr. Rendle,” came back in the 
same sneering tones. “If I’d known of the honour 
beforehand I’d have dressed according!” 

A few titters broke the momentary silence, then 
the storm of conversation broke out afresh. 


370 An Unknown Quantity 

In a moment Jimmy was back fluttering and twit¬ 
tering like a moth round a candle. 

“Come and have a drink,’’ he said, “you’ll find it 
all over there. Oh damn! some fool’s knocked over 
the only bottle of sheriy! there’s some Chianti left, 
at least there ought to be: wait a moment. I’ll see 
what I can find.” 

He vanished in the old familiar way behind a pile 
of canvases, but within a second or two his head 
reappeared. 

“Where’s Joyce?” he asked. 

‘ ‘ She’s in the country with the child. ’ ’ 

“Oh yes, by the by, congratulations, old man, I’d 
quite forgotten!” The head vanished again and 
there followed the sound of broken crockery herald¬ 
ing Jimmy’s complete emergence with a bottle in 
either hand. 

“I hnew they were somewhere!” he remarked tri¬ 
umphantly, “I say,” he added, “every one’s here 
except Liell and Agatha. ’ ’ 

Evelyn looked round him, nodding to a few ac¬ 
quaintances, exchanging a word here and there. 
Prosser he dimly saw and Doris Carter, while a faint 
noise of strumming told him that David must be 
somewhere though he could not see him. The known 
faces, however, seemed islanded in a sea of strangers 
who yet appeared dimly familiar. Every now and 
again he found himself trying to remember names 
for bodies that he seemed to know, only to conclude, 
after fruitlessly cudgelling his brain, that he had 
never, in fact, set eyes on them before. Somehow the 
atmosphere of the assembly invested its constituent 
members with a “type” likeness that confused the 
onlooker into believing that they were individually 


An Unknown Quantity 371 

recognisable instead of, in reality, permitting only 
of a sort of group classification. Jimmy’s mania for 
friendship, he concluded after a quarter of an hour 
spent in such unsuccessful searching, must be as 
catholic as ever. These were, undoubtedly, samples 
of a ‘‘new lot” that his host was busily pouring into 
the ancient mould. 

After a while, tired of watching a company that 
seemed content to ignore him, he wandered over to 
where Doris Carter sat enthroned above three or 
four excited young men. She yearned a welcome at 
him, but he noticed that at his approach the vivacity 
of her admirers diminished. He exchanged a few 
words with her, but she was never eloquent and the 
conversation drooped quickly. He sat, then, silent, 
and the tide of talk rose gradually round him. He 
listened to find some point of common interest, seek¬ 
ing a postern through which he might bend and 
enter, but all in vain. The discussion appeared to be 
of persons whose names he had never heard, of 
schemes and achievements the mention of which con¬ 
veyed nothing to him. 

Wherever he went the same consciousness of being 
a stranger appalled him. At last he sought out 
“Bunny” on a distant settee, and sank down wearily 
at her side. She gave him a sideways glance of half- 
pitying amusement. 

“It’s no good your coming here,” she said. “I’m 
sure I’m not up to you and Louis’s just gone; you 
might have found something to talk of with him.” 

Her tone annoyed him. “AVhat the devil do you 
mean by ‘up to’?” he snapped. 

“You’re finding the prodigal’s return rather an 


372 An Unknown Quantity 

unspectacular affair, aren’t you?” she queried in 
her turn. 

‘‘Oh, ‘Bunny,’ you’re impossible!” he cried, 
springing up. 

“Oh, it’s all for your own good, you know,” she 
mocked: “I’m sure your wife wouldn’t like you to 
talk to me all evening; she disapproves; you may 
happen to have noticed it I ” 

He turned on his heel without replying and 
strolled moodily across to a distant corner where he 
found a seat amongst the debris of Jimmy’s buffet. 
Now and again the figure of his tireless host ap¬ 
proached him in ceaseless exercise of hospitality, ex¬ 
changed a few words with him, and vanished. Other¬ 
wise his melancholy and ill-tempered reflections were 
undisturbed. Slowly he let his eyes wander round 
the room. Everything was as he remembered it: 
the same unfinished pictures against the walls, the 
same empty frames, and, in the corner above his 
head, the leaky patch of roof still unmended. In his 
ears the same talk murmured, before his eyes faces, 
different indeed in detail but essentially unchanged, 
moved and grimaced. Only in its relation to him 
was anything altered, but there the change w^as abso¬ 
lute. Jimmy was, of course, as he always had been, 
as he always would be, but the others! The sense 
of their aloofness, their coldness that was all but 
patronage, irritated him. He yawned, leaned back 
in his chair, and gazed at the ceiling. Through the 
broken plaster and dislodged tiles he could see the 
infinite blue of the night sky and a single star twin¬ 
kling. He thought suddenly of the quiet spaces of the 
Berkshire Downs, of the tree-kept stillness of Stone- 
church, of Joyce and the silent, happy country. A 


An Unknown Quantity 373 

new, almost unbearable, impatience for the morrow 
seized and shook him. 

A sudden sound, some voice or laugh, interrupted 
his reverie and brought back thoughts, with eyes, to 
the room. As he tilted himself forward, something 
within him made, automatically, a readjustment of 
the scene. The irritation and the disappointment of 
a while before had melted in the rising warmth of a 
new and comforting reflection. Inexplicably, but 
surely, the angle of his approach had, within the last 
few minutes, shifted. His conscious relationship to 
the company had altered, matured. It was he now 
who sat on the hill-side watching and appraising. 
Wasn’t it, after all, he who had changed, grown? 
They, it was true, were unchanged because they were 
unchangeable. It had been foolish of him ever to 
come back, still more foolish to await the resurrec¬ 
tion of old emotions buried, long since, decently. 
Suddenly he remembered how, in the days of his 
early manhood, he had once impulsively revisited a 
place that memories of childhood had kept romantic. 
As he saw them again the hills and valleys of that 
old fairyland had dwindled to a dreadful, natural 
size, overwhelming him in the miserable ruins of 
shattered expectation. Just such an evil magic had 
worked again. Now as then towers and castles of 
imagination shed their glamour and were but or¬ 
dinary houses; roaring cataracts dwindled to the 
sleepy plashing of tiny streams; the very sky seemed 
small. Now as then, after the first pang of half- 
angry despair, he could watch himself unmoved tak¬ 
ing in his hands the scattered pieces—sorting them 
with a craftsman’s care, setting them to build new 
patterns. 


374 


An Unknown Quantity 

As he gazed and pondered anew he felt no irrita¬ 
tion, only an amused wonder that he should ever 
have allowed himself to pass, unaware, into the 
shadow of disillusion. These bewhiskered young 
men, these sprawling, untidy women, he saw them 
now with new eyes, with, had he but realised it, 
Joyce’s eyes: what on earth did it matter what they 
thought of him? The sight of them filled him with a 
faint distaste; the meaningless jabber of tongues 
came to him touched with a nightmare quality of 
endlessness. Every face, every corner of the room, 
seemed to him now to be stamped with the seal of the 
ineffectual, and in his new sense of the scene he 
found no flavour of disloyalty. 

A craving came upon him for fresh air and quiet¬ 
ness. He left his chair meaning to slip away un¬ 
noticed, but before he got half-way to the door 
Jimmy pounced. 

‘‘Oh, I say,” he protested, “you can’t go yet!” 

Evelyn smiled: in the sudden exaltation of his 
mood he felt towards his host as one feels in the 
presence of an importunate pet. 

“I really must,” he replied. “I’m frightfully 
tired and I’ve got an early start in the morning. It’s 
been jolly seeing you again.” 

“But I haven’t seen anything of youV’ Jimmy 
wailed, “and I’ve got such heaps to talk to you 
about. How long are you going away for?” 

“I don’t know: probably a couple of months.” 

“Well, you must come along again when you get 
back, and bring Joyce with you. I don’t believe I’ve 
seen her since the Chelsea Arts. I say,” he added 
with a sudden change of interest, wasn’t that top¬ 
ping?” 


375 


An Unknown Quantity 

A voice called him and he turned away with a 
‘‘Well, good-bye then; remember to come round as 
soon as you get back.’^ 

Evelyn pursued his way to the door. He was 
within a few feet of it when he heard “ Bunny^s^’ 
drawl behind him. 

“If you’re going, perhaps you’ll consent to walk 
a bit of the way with me. ’ ’ 

He fancied that her voice was gentler than it had 
been earlier in the evening, and consented to the 
proposal feeling that perhaps he had been unduly 
rude to her. 

“Of course,” he said, “I shall be delighted.” 

The mocking note crept back as she replied: ‘ ‘ Oh, 
I don’t ask as much as that, you know!” 

At the end of Swan Wallv they turned to the left 
and walked for some distance in silence. At last: 

“Oh, hell!” she said. 

“Hullo, what’s the matter!” 

“The whole damned universe, I suppose: Jimmy 
gets on my nerves, he’s so infernally good-natured!” 

After a pause she continued: 

“What the devil induced you to turn up this eve¬ 
ning ! ’ ’ 

“Oh, I don’t know, I met Stephen and he sug¬ 
gested it, and so—oh, well, you see I hadn’t been for 
such ages.” 

She turned on him fiercely. “And you had noth¬ 
ing better to do! Oh, for God’s sake be honest! You 
thought everybody would lie down and lick your 
boots, the big boy coming back to school, the suc¬ 
cessful man condescending! well, I hope you’re satis¬ 
fied with your welcome! ’ ’ 


376 An Unknown Quantity 

‘ ^ My dear ‘ Bunny, ’ what utter piffle you do talk! I 
never thought anything of the kind, why should I?’’ 

She relapsed once more into a brooding silence. 
Undisturbed by her voice Evelyn occupied himself 
with his own thoughts, and that they, at least, were 
not gloomy, might be inferred from the cheerful per¬ 
sistence of his whistling, the sound of which roused 
his companion to further speech. 

^^You sound pretty happy at any rate,’’ she said, 
and added as an apparently illogical afterthought, 
‘‘God, how I loathe this w^eather!” 

The smouldering passion of the words made him 
look intently at her. 

‘ ‘ Why ? ” he asked. ‘‘I think it’s wonderful. ’’ 

“It’s unsettling and I hate being unsettled,” she 
replied. 

He continued his whistling and, after a few min¬ 
utes, she muttered ungraciously and but half will¬ 
ingly, “I suppose that’s why I’m so peculiarly of¬ 
fensive to-night: I’m sorry.” 

He felt touched and vaguely frightened: it was 
unlike “Bunny” to be apologetic. 

“You’re not really ill, are you?” he inquired, in¬ 
nocent of intended irony. 

She laughed at that. ‘ ‘ Thank the Lord I was born 
with a sense of humour! ’ ’ she said. 

They spoke no more until they reached her door 
in Flood Street, then, as he was preparing to leave 
her, she turned with a sudden invitation shot at him 
sharply, almost like an accusation. 

“Come in for a bit.” 

He hesitated. 

“I don’t think I will, ‘Bunny,’ ” he began. 
-” 



An Unknown Quantity 377 

His words seemed to wake in her a perverse spirit 
of determination. 

‘‘If I donH have some one to talk to I shall wander 
about and go to the dogs/’ she said, and then, as he 
still seemed uncertain: 

‘ ‘ Oh, I shan’t eat you, you know! ’ ’ 

The bitterness in her voice brought to him sud¬ 
denly an overwhelming sense of her loneliness. 

“Oh, well,” he replied, “for a quarter of an hour, 
then. ’ ’ 

Even to that she could not be gracious. 

“A good Samaritan!” she murmured, fumbling 
with her latchkey for the lock, “I suppose that’s bet¬ 
ter than nothing.” 

The interior of the house was filled with a thick 
darkness and he felt his way noisily behind her up 
the uncarpeted staircase. 

“It doesn’t matter how much row you make,” she 
reassured him, “there’s no one else in the place.” 

Outside her own door she took a box of matches 
from her pocket. 

“Wait a moment while I go in and light the gas,” 
she said. “We don’t aspire to the dizzy heights of 
electric light, so you must put up with what you can 
get.” 

A moment later the gas flared and he followed her. 
She had turned to face him as he entered and looked 
at him now, as he vaguely thought, with something 
of defiance in her glance. 

“Shove your things anywhere; I’ll put the kettle 
on and make some coffee.” 

He shut the door and went into the farther room. 
There he sat down to await her and glanced around 
him. 


378 An Unknown Quantity 

The forlorn untidiness of everything sent a pang 
to his heart. This particular aspect of her solitude 
had never before struck him, or never so strongly. 
It was worse, surely, it must be worse, than it used 
to be? Or was it here as it had been in the studio— 
on that matter he had no doubts—that he and not 
the room was changed? In what he now invariably 
referred to in his own mind as ‘‘the old days,’’ he 
had taken an almost envious delight in the unconven¬ 
tionality of “Bunny’s” apartment, seeing in its un¬ 
compromising disorder a fine display of independ¬ 
ence and originality. To-night he noticed only the 
uncurtained window, the deal table still cumbered 
with the relics of supper, the corner piled with un¬ 
tidy lumber. 

His reflections were interrupted by her sudden 
return. Something in his face must have given the 
clue to his thoughts. 

“Oh, we’re not elegant!” she muttered, brushing 
a space of table clear, and setting two cups. 

He glanced up at her, and the sight of her sallow, 
discontented face, with the dark-ringed eyes, roused 
him. He jumped up. 

“Here, let me give a hand,” he proposed as non¬ 
chalantly as possible. 

Her refusal was final. “I don’t want any help, 
stay where you are.” A moment later she brought 
in the coffee and silently poured it out; then she sat 
down at the table, opposite to him. 

From the rock of his own security he looked down, 
consciously aloof and pitying, into the eddies of her 
squalid loneliness. He wanted to put into words the 
impulse of generosity that suddenly assailed him, 
but an unaccountable embarrassment held him dumb. 


An Unknown Quantity 379 

She too seemed to feel the constraint that filled the 
room, for she got up quickly and turned the flaring 
gas-jet lower. 

‘‘I can’t stand that noise!” she explained. 

The sense of her restlessness accentuated horribly 
his already intense discomfort. As she turned back 
to the table he nerved himself to speak. 

‘Bunny,’ ” he said, “why on earth don’t you get 
somebody to come and live with you, some girl who’s 
got work to do?” 

She had been about to sit down, but at his words 
she stopped and stared at him with blazing eyes. 

“Who the hell d’you think I’d find?” she burst 
out, “I’m so easy, so accommodating, aren’t I?” 
and then, “Keep your comfortable kindness for 
other people, I loathe it, I tell you, loathe it!” 

She was trembling with the force of her passion 
and he gazed at her fascinated, uncomprehending, 
frightened momentarily out of his attitude of de¬ 
tachment. It was as though his crag had split and 
crumbled treacherously, leaving him all unprepared, 
legs dangling, on the edge of an abyss. He sat tense, 
like a man expecting a blow, waiting for her to con¬ 
tinue, but with a visible effort she controlled herself 
and walked over to the window. She stood, her back 
to the room, looking out, and when next she spoke it 
was in tones so low that he could with difficulty hear 
the words. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and, after a mo¬ 
ment’s pause, “Have a cigarette!” 

She held them out to him, half turned, her face 
averted, but before he could take one, a fresh spasm 
of fury shook her. Snatching the packet back from 


380 An Unknown Quantity 

his outstretched hand, she flung it far out into the 
night. 

‘‘Damn, damn, damn!’’ she cried, and swung 
round again to face him: “it’s no good pretending!” 

She came back to the table and sat down, her arms 
stretched in front of her, her hands clenched so fast 
that the knuckles showed livid. 

‘ ‘ Why did you do it ? ” she asked. 

Still half dazed by the suddenness of the storm, he 
temporised. 

‘ ‘ Do what ? ” he asked. 

“AVhy did you come back!—Oh, I know, I know,” 
she went on before he could reply; “besides, what 
does it matter, that^s only a bit of it! Why did you 
do everything you have done, give it all up, play the 
traitor, the coward, the buffoon? Can’t you see 
you’ve thrown it all away, every scrap of what you 
had? Once upon a time I believed you were honest 
and—and keen. Oh, God! you were honest, until that 
miserable chit came ogling and flattering and minc¬ 
ing with the manners of a shop girl! What’s it all 
for? For her? Oh, it makes me mad to think of the 
fool you’ve been. . . . Evelyn, what the devil in¬ 
duced you to marry her ? ’ ’ 

He was already on his feet, shaking mth anger. 

‘ ‘ Shut up! ” he cried, ‘ ‘ I don’t care a damn what 
you say to me, but you’ll jolly well leave my wife out 
of it!” 

“Oh yes, leave your wife out of it!” she mimicked, 
“that’s so easy, isn’t it? Why, she’s there in every 
word you speak, in every look. It’s yourself you’ve 
left out of it, thaVs not you over there, why it’s not 
even her husband, it’s her creature, oh yes it is, and 


An Unknown Quantity 381 

you know it, something she^s made to help her play 
the little lady 

He snatched up his hat: ‘‘I’m not going to stand 
this!” he said. 

She was on her feet in a moment, her breast heav¬ 
ing, a spot of red on each salient cheek bone. 

“Oh, I shan’t keep you!” she cried, “but you’re 
going to hear me out first, it’s the only time anyone’ll 
talk to you as you’ve got to be talked to!” 

She faced him, as he moved towards the door, like 
a wild animal. His hand was already upon the knob 
when her torrent of words broke out afresh, stun¬ 
ning him, compelling him, despite himself, to listen. 

“You don’t love her; I won’t believe you love her! 
You wanted her once and you hadn’t the courage to 
tell her so, to tell yourself so. Ho you think she loves 
you? Oh yes, for what she can get from you, and 
not a scrap more! What does she know of love? 
Why, the very sight of it would frighten her, horrify 
her little middle-class soul. Can’t you see what 
you’ve missed? I could have given it to you, I can 
give it to you still. Oh, it’s not too late, not quite too 
late! It’s here, 7’m here, for you to take! rd 
never have asked for marriage, what the devil do I 
want with marriage? . . . Oh, you don’t like that! 
I’m too coarse for your new, delicate palate: you’ve 
got scruples now, her scruples, her little respecta¬ 
bilities ! 

“Evelyn!” a softer note crept suddenly into her 
voice, “won’t you face things, won’t you see? Are 
you going to be blind always? 

“I imagined such wonderful things for you, I- 

Oh! D’you think I cared a curse for them, for 



382 An Unknown Quantity 

Jimmy, and Stephen, and the others? D^ou think 
IVe ever had illusions about myself? You fool! 
You damned fool! Don’t you understand that it 
was because you were so much more than them, and 
—and —now you’re nothing, worse than nothing, 
rotten, false!” 

She stopped, emptied of words and strength, pant¬ 
ing, looking at him, and, as she looked, she saw 
the surprise and anger in his face harden to disgust. 

With a choking sound she dropped into the chair 
behind her and flung her head forward on to her 
arms. 

‘‘Oh, why do you make me say things like that!’’ 
she wailed. “Get out! Get out! Get out! I hope 
to God I’ll never see you again!” 


BOOK III 


LIELL TALKS 


y 






THE SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER 


years after the events just related, about 
J- four o^clock of an October afternoon, Agatha 
Biscoe climbed the southern slope of Campden Hill 
on her way to Beverley’s remote and high-pitched 
dwelling. She walked fast, for the late, bright sun 
had little warmth to give, and the fresh wind, 
touched perceptibly with frost, brought a glow of 
colour to her cheeks. Gusts of dried leaves swept 
rustling down the hill to meet her, and in the gar¬ 
dens on her left hand trees stood like gently quiver¬ 
ing flames against the pale blue of the sky. She 
seemed, however, to be too absorbed in thought to 
have eyes for the autumn pageant, and a slight 
frown between her eyes gave evidence that her re¬ 
flections were not of the pleasantest description. 

As she came within sight of the great water-tower 
her footsteps lagged as though she had become less 
certain of her purpose. Now and again she stopped 
and snitfed the pungent scent of bonfires drifting 
with blue smoke from behind the palings of the gar¬ 
dens that still jealously preserve for the gentle hill 
an air peacefully rural, but there was in her action 
no ecstatic appreciation of the scene, rather the 
loitering hesitation that comes from disinclination to 
perform an unpleasant task. The sound of bells 
from the neighbouring parish church chiming the 
hour, brought her to another, but this time a fully 

385 


386 An Unknown Quantity 

attentive, standstill. She waited until the last re¬ 
verberation of the sound had died away, consulted, 
as though by instinct, her own watch, and then, with 
a little movement of impatience, proceeded with con¬ 
scious determination upon her way. 

At the foot of the wooden staircase that ascended 
from the street to her goal she halted once again, but 
this time for no longer than a few seconds, before 
setting herself to climb the final stage of her journey. 

Beverley himself opened the door in response to 
her knock, and she entered without a word. The 
clear, washed air flooding through every window 
with an almost visible substance, gave to the room an 
impression of ‘‘openness’^ that made it seem, for the 
moment, more spacious even than the reality from 
which she had, but a second previously, come. A 
sensation of peace and sanity and broad views de¬ 
scended upon her, smoothing the frown from her 
forehead and bringing a quick, vivid smile of relief 
to her lips. 

‘‘Why it’s not changed at all!’’the thought formed 
itself into words, and she laughed her own comment 
to them as at the sound of a stranger’s startled cry. 

“There’s so little to change,” he smiled back. 
“Are you disappointed?” 

“Oh, Liell, if you knew how pleased!” 

“What made you think it would be?” 

“I don’t suppose I did think at all. I had a funny 
sort of fear it might. After all, two years is a long 
time, isn’t it?” 

During this exchange they had both been standing 
in the middle of the room; now he drew one of the 
two large wicker chairs to the stove in front of 


An Unknown Quantity 387 

which the tea-table already stood. She was about to 
sit down, but he interrupted her. 

‘‘Ah, but you can’t keep those things on, you’ll be 
boiled alive!” and he took the fur from her shoul¬ 
ders. Something in his manner of doing so, some 
strange gentleness, made her look round at him, but 
she said nothing. 

He pulled up his chair to face hers. 

“Is it really two whole years?” he asked. 

“Since I was here? All but a few weeks.” 

“And you got back-?” 

“A riionth ago: you weren’t here then. I found 
that out, so I didn’t write.” 

“No, I drifted back last Friday; but I’ve not been 
wandering all over Europe: I envied you. ’ ’ 

“It was wonderful, but I’m glad to be home.” 

“And to find no change?” 

They both fell silent at the question as though a 
curtain had awkwardly been twitched to give a 
glimpse of something that they had agreed, for the 
present, to ignore. Beverley jumped up. 

“What a dreadful host I am!” he cried. “I’m 
forgetting all about tea,” and he lifted the puffing 
kettle from the stove. 

Agatha seized the proffered diversion. 

“Sit down, Liell,” she said, “that’s my privi¬ 
lege. ’ ’ 

He surrendered with a good grace. “I won’t pre¬ 
tend I’m not becoming self-indulgent,”he remarked. 
“I love having my weaknesses pampered.” 

Throughout the meal they talked of trivial things 
with an earnestness that would have betrayed them 
both had betrayal been necessary. Agatha’s long 



388 An Unknown Quantity 

absence with her husband, her impressions of travel, 
Beverley’s schemes and adventures, all were dis¬ 
cussed, but with, for both of them, an air of dis¬ 
comfort, the consciousness, unadmitted but over¬ 
whelmingly with them, of a third guest, silent but 
cynically smiling, at their feast, a guest before whom 
the pretence must be elaborately kept up. Each saw 
him and each saw too that the other saw, and yet, 
for nearly an hour, they played their game with a 
strict observance of every rule. Move followed 
move, but gradually the players tired. The pauses 
in the talk grew more frequent and more prolonged, 
until at last it was clear that they could pretend no 
longer. 

Beverley sat up suddenly with an air of deter¬ 
mination. 

“This is perfectly ridiculous, Agatha,” he said. 

She made a final, despairing effort to retreat. 

“What do you mean, Liell?” she asked, “I don’t 
understand. ’ ’ 

He frowned impatiently. “Oh, yes you do; we’re 
behaving like a couple of children: I didn’t ask you 
to tea for the sake of small talk, and you didn’t come 
for that either. I’ve got something to show you.” 

He hoisted himself out of his chair and went 
across to his writing-table. 

“I nearly didn’t come at all!” she murmured. 

He rummaged for a moment or two among his 
papers and came back to the stove with a bundle of 
them in his arms. These he flung on to the floor by 
the side of his chair and stooped above them, for a 
while, sorting. At last he chose an illustrated 
weekly journal, opened it at a full-page photograph, 
and handed it to her. 


An Unknown Quantity 389 

“There,” he said, and leaned forward to take a 
card from the mantelpiece. 

Agatha stretched out her hand half timorously 
for the proffered paper, and out of the corner of his 
eye he watched her gaze silently at the picture. 
Slowly she lowered it to her knees and stared in 
reverie at the opposite wall. 

Listen,^’ he said, and read from the card he held 
in his hand: 


‘‘PICCADILLY HALL. 

Commencing on Thursday, November 2nd, Mr. H. B. 
EENDLE (in large capitals, my dear) will deliver 

a series of lectures on 

‘The Coming Eenaissance in English Letters^ (in 

smaller capitals). 

Tickets, 125. 66?., 75. 66?. and 55. (unreserved), can 
be obtained from the hall and from the usual agents. 
The dates of the subsequent lectures will be an¬ 
nounced later.’’ 

He paused, watching her with a slight smile, but 
she said nothing, and he continued. 

“Here is a list of the current theatrical attrac¬ 
tions. You will notice that I have marked three 
items in blue pencil, and here”—lifting a large 
bundle of papers from the floor—“are the issues of 
the Morning Post containing accounts of the chief 
social functions of last season. Most of them you 
will find marked also. The publishers’ lists and ^he 
advertisements of the Sunday papers you have prob¬ 
ably seen.” 


390 


An Unknown Quantity 

She made, with her hand, a movement of protest. 

‘‘I know, I know,’’ she said. The note of hesita¬ 
tion, of timidity, had gone from her voice. She 
spoke now firmly, bitterly. 

‘‘And that’s why yon expected to find change— 
everywhere?” 

“That’s why I nearly ran down the hill again in¬ 
stead of coming to tea with yon. If that can hap¬ 
pen,” she went on, in tardy answer to his qnestion, 
“anyone or anything may change.” 

“My poor Agatha, yon feel it as strongly as all 
that, yonr own failnre to foresee the inevitable?” 

She tnrned on him passionately. 

“Oh, it wasn’t inevitable!” she cried. “I won’t 
believe that I ’ ’ 

He shrngged his shonlders. “My dear,” he re¬ 
plied, “God is not the only person who moves in a 
mysterions way, and the proof of the man is often in 
the marriage.” 

A silence fell between them which he broke with a 
qnestion. 

“Yon’ve been to see him?” 

“I went last week.” 

“To the grand new honse?” 

‘ ‘ Oh yes, to the grand new honse, and she patron¬ 
ized me, insulted me, treated me, snbtly enough of 
course, as thongh I was not altogether respectable. 
I conld have stood that, bnt she kept him away from 
me, told me he was working and mnstn’t be dis- 
tnrbed. ’ ’ 

“I suppose one mnst do something to jnstify 
one’s portrait in the fashionable press as the wife of 
a famons man.” 

“Liell, it’s intolerable, it’s a nightmare!” 



An Unknown Quantity 391 

‘‘She patronised you because she’s frightened of 
you. ’ ’ 

“Frightened of me! Nonsense! Why should she 
be frightened; what have I ever shown her but kind¬ 
ness and sympathy?” 

“My dear Agatha, don’t you see, you represent to 
her something she can’t understand, something that 
she fears may still influence him, and just because 
you’re more than that, because in her heart she likes 
you, you seem to her doubly dangerous.” 

“Oh, Liell, don’t make excuses for her! You 
think I’m manufacturing a case, I know you do, but 
you can’t know how hard I’ve tried to acquit her in 
my own mind. I believed in her when no one else 
did, I always hoped for the best, I’ve had it out 
with Jack time and time again: why, I’ve almost 
quarrelled with him over it, and now I know that he 
was right from the beginning. If you’d seen her the 
other day! She won, oh yes, she won, for I was 
almost in tears; there was no fight left in me. What 
a tragedy, Liell, what a tragedy!” 

“I wonder,” he said. 

She leaned forward and touched his knee with her 
hand. 

“Liell, dear, you’re not being honest with me, I 
can’t believe that you take it as lightly as you pre¬ 
tend. Isn’t it a tragedy to see a friend gulled, and 
spoiled, and stolen, to watch his weakness grow and 
his strength, his splendid strength, wither and die, 
to know that he is being imposed upon without 
scruple through just those weaknesses that one had 
tried to help him conquer, to feel, through it all, that 
one is impotent to help?” 

She withdrew her hand and shook herself. The 


392 An Unknown Quantity 

hard, impatient note which had been, for the mo¬ 
ment, absent from her voice, crept back. 

‘‘It’s no good, I’m beyond feeling philosophically 
about it, I was beyond it as soon as I saw what was 
going on. I too had illusions once; I thought she 
was a simple little thing whom Evelyn didn’t under¬ 
stand, and I pitied her and tried to make things 
easier for her. But now—oh, it makes me wild to 
think how wrong I was! She understood him, or the 
part of him she wanted to understand, understood it 
with all the intensity of her commonness, her little¬ 
ness, her vulgarity. Her cunning—I won’t use a 
softer word—is endless. You’ve only to look at the 
way she works on him through the child; that’s her 
lever, her spur, her whip to make him slave and 
cheapen himself. I don’t believe she cares two pins 
for the boy: there are no others, there never will be 
others!” 

Beverley kept his eyes fixed on the stove. 

“Ah, my dear,” he said, “that’s not like you, 
that’s small and spiteful, it’s the talk of ‘Bunny,’ 
of Stephen, of the studio. What can you know, what 
can any of us know?” 

She turned to him unrepentant. 

“You make me angry, Liell,” she said, “you 
know well enough that every word of it is true, that 
he’s been trapped and cheapened. Look at his work: 
we do at least know that. Can’t we all remember 
what it was three years ago, what we hoped from 
it, what we saw in it? And now—this!” She took 
up a handful of the papers that Beverley had given 
her and dropped them again. “Do you pretend that 
ever since his marriage he hasn’t consistently 


An Unknown Quantity 393 

ten down, down to the level at which easy money 
lies, at which she wants to make him liveT’ 

He looked at her a moment before replying. 
^‘WeVe got to face the truth, he said slowly. 
‘‘When a man writes down, as you call it, consist¬ 
ently, when he does it seriously and not with his 
tongue in his cheek, one’s got to admit that the level 
may be the one most natural to him. If by observing 
that standard he finds success, then ten to one the 
standard is fundamentally his own. Evelyn, I 
gather, has most certainly succeeded.” 

“Liell!” she cried, “you were his friend, and you 
can say that!” 

“My conception of friendship, Agatha, is to take 
my friend as he is, not as he isn’t, not as I would 
make a man drawn to a pattern. ’ ’ 

She left the challenge unanswered. 

“It’s her level,” she replied, “the level of the sec¬ 
ond rate. That’s what I can’t get over, it’s the level 
of bridge-parties, of fashionable ‘intelligence,’ of 
Monte Carlo in the winter and ‘society’ in the sea¬ 
son. She’s been too much for him; he’s never really 
understood her, never seen what she was getting 
at.” After a pause she added, “No man really un¬ 
derstands a woman, especially a clever woman.” 

He smiled. “That, if you will excuse me saying 
so, is your sex vanity, Agatha. Any man who is not 
an idiot can understand the manoeuvres of any wo¬ 
man if he wants to: there’s no peculiar mystery 
about them. Evelyn hasn’t tried, his ambitions 
didn’t lie that way, besides, as I’ve always told him, 
he’s lacking in imagination. Do you remember, 
ages ago, before any of this happened, I once said 


394 


An Unknown Quantity 

that I should like to see him up against the natural 
woman? I don’t often remember my own remarks, 
but circumstances have kept that one in my mind. 
Strictly speaking, of course, there’s no such person 
as the ‘natural’ woman, but for the sake of argu¬ 
ment Joyce’ll do, and he’s been up against her for 
the last three years.” 

The words seemed to wake in her mind a new 
train of thought. “Ah, Liell,” she murmured, 
“you’ve not been entirely blameless. I remember 
other things you said long ago. I remember your 
‘new mythology,’ a champion Andromeda and a cap¬ 
tive Perseus. She never had the ghost of an idea 
what you meant, but instinct taught her to use every¬ 
thing, even what she didn’t understand, in her battle. 
She’s turned your words against you.” 

“Not against me, my dear,” he protested. 

“Well then, against him. Your Andromeda was 
only Eve after all.” 

“Your criticism doesn’t frighten me, it doesn’t 
even make me feel ashamed of myself. In this un¬ 
fortunate world every man is fated, sooner or later, 
to join battle—or hands, with Eve. Some of us get 
the fight done early and then we are privileged to 
sit in the Grand Stand and watch the melee.” 

“That’s cheap, cynical!” 

“Cynical because it tells the truth? My dear, 
isn’t it you who are the cynic, or the sentimentalist? 
—the dividing line is sometimes very faint. You 

%ok before and after 
And pine for what is not/ 

“The cynic and the sentimentalist both hide from 
reality, the one behind gibes, the other behind tears. 



An Unknown Quantity 395 

I have no contempt for Evelyn, only a watchful eye 
and a mind that tries to understand. ’ ’ 

“But you must have meant something by your 
Andromeda, you did mean something. You thought 
she was going to get Evelyn out of his groove, IVe 
heard you say so again and again; you thought she 
was going to open a door for him to a wide prospect, 
and all she’s done is to open the door of the oven. 
Liell, with all your wisdom you forgot the proverb 
about the frying-pan.” 

“Oh no, I didn’t, and as I once told Evelyn, I’m 
beginning to believe in proverbs. After all, you 
know, I’m not sure that the sublime certainty of the 
fire isn’t better than the everlasting sizzling. Fire 
purifies.” 

“How can you talk of purification in a such case?” 

“Well, at least one knows when one is in the fire: 
it’s a very complete reality.” 

“A reality, in the end, of dead, cold ashes.” 

“Is it a compliment to him to believe that he can 
be burnt out so soon and so completely?” 

“What else can one believe?” 

“You would prefer to see him still sizzling as he 
was three years ago; was that a situation of any 
greater dignity or value?” 

“Three years ago he was sincere, fine, ambitious 
in the right way, for the right things.” 

“The right way? Wasn’t it simply that he was 
ambitious in other people’s ways? Instead of being 
the darling of his wife he was the darling of—Swan 
Walk. Wasn’t that just as lamentable?” 

“It was a better way.” 

“Why should you say that? Why should you al- 


39^ An Unknown Quantity 

low other people to judge for him and yet deny him 
the right j;o judge for himself T’ 

‘ ‘ He would have grown out of his weakness. ’ ’ 

“He has grown out of it; he may grow still 
farther, he’s what?—twenty-nine at the most, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

For the first time since her arrival Agatha’s eyes 
brightened. She looked suddenly hopeful, excited. 

“Oh!” she cried, bending forward in her chair 
and clasping her hands, “do you think there’s still 
a chance of that—do you, really?” 

Beverley got up and stood with his back to the 
stove, looking down at her. 

“My dear Agatha,” he said, “you demand a 
prophecy, you ask for a sign 1 How can I tell? Any¬ 
thing may happen.” 

He broke off and, raising his eyes, gazed intently 
across the top of her head out of the uncurtained 
window. She waited expectant, as though she knew 
that he would continue. At the end of a few mo¬ 
ments he did so, speaking slowly, softly, more to 
himself than to a listener. 

“The truth of the matter is that Evelyn has been, 
and is still, going through the illnesses of his intel¬ 
lectual childhood. First it was the heat and fever 
of measles, now it’s the swelling of the mumps. The 
sequence is, I imagine, fairly normal. He has taken 
both badly, but I remember that an old family doctor 
once told me that the severe ‘dose’ betokened the 
strong constitution. That’s as it may or may not be, 
but in any case what does it really matter?” 

“Doesn’t it matter to lose a friend?” 

He made no direct answer to the question, but 
walked over to one of the large windows, f^-om 


An Unknown Quantity 397 

which, for a moment or two, he looked in silence. 
Then he turned his head. 

‘‘Hasn’t it struck you, Agatha, that you are, after 
all, raising a mighty to-do over nothing? That 
you’re making the worst of what may quite conceiv¬ 
ably be a very good job? Is it really so vastly im¬ 
portant that half a dozen mediocre books and plays 
should get themselves written or remain unborn? 
Is it essential for the happiness or knowledge of the 
world that one particular man should twist himself 
into becoming, at the best, a second-rate poseur at 
the risk of condemning his wife to the intolerable 
burden of a bad husband, that one individual should 
remain a long-faced prig instead of living a normal, 
happy life that harms no one and gives pleasure to a 
great many?” 

“But this posturing,” she pointed to the papers 
at her side, “these lectures, all the empty, flowing 
robes of the priest and the prophet?” 

“Mumps, my dear; swelling. That will pass as 
others of his phases have passed and he wiU sur¬ 
vive. ’ ’ 

“Survive, as what?” 

“Who knows?” he shrugged his shoulders, “pos¬ 
sibly, and, I hope, probably, as an adequate, unin¬ 
spired, simple, successful tradesman, working con¬ 
sciously and contentedly at the level—of his facul¬ 
ties.” 

He turned again to his window before continuing. 
At last: 

“I’ve thought foolish thoughts in my time,” he 
said “and I’ve said some dam’ foolish things, but 
perhaps I was at my very worst when I told Evelyn 
one day that he had sold his soul.” 


39^ An Unknown Quantity 

She turned her head sharply. 

‘‘You told him that?’’ she queried. 

“Yes, it’s no good pretending that I didn’t: my 
only excuse is that I was in a bad temper and down 
there,” he nodded his head towards the just visible 
tree-tops of Kensington Gardens. “I shouldn’t 
have been such an ass up here.” 

Agatha frowned in irritable perplexity. 

“I can’t understand you, Liell;‘you told him the 
truth and now you seem to be ashamed of it. He 
sold his soul on the day of his marriage. You tell 
me that you were brave enough to say that to him 
and in the next breath you deny yourself!” 

“I deny myself, as you call it, because what I said 
was bombast, ‘cliche,’ nonsense. Let’s get free from 
phrases, we two, and see things clearly. Evelyn of¬ 
fered something for sale but it wasn’t his soul. 
That'll be safe enough as soon as he realises that it 
had no part in the bargain. It’s because he dreams 
uneasily still the same dream that haunts you that 
he puts on the robes so ludicrously large for him. 
He’s trying to justify something that doesn’t need 
justification. He’s bargaining with goods that are 
only fit, after all, for bargaining, and his salvation 
lies in understanding just that one truth. He dimly 
sees it already, I believe, but he can’t bring himself 
to face disillusion boldly—yet.” 

He walked back slowly into the room and stood by 
her chair. 

“You must see sense, Agatha,” he said impa¬ 
tiently. “Poor, dear Evelyn never was and never 
could be a genius. If you and the rest of ’em told 
him he was you lied to him and gulled yourselves 
with words. I, at least, never said so. Because I’m 


An Unknown Quantity 399 

willing to face the fact of the real Evelyn with my 
eyes open I can’t see why I should stumble in my 
affection for him. I don’t go about seeking as my 
friends scattered flowers of genius in the bud or in 
the blossom. I was always fond of Evelyn and I’m 
just as fond of him now, perhaps a little bit fonder 
even, because I know now where, exactly, I am, 
where he is, and I hope and pray he knows it, too. 

‘^You say that the life he’s leading now is second 
rate, and you attribute that to his wife. Hasn’t it 
ever struck you that the real reason may be that 
he too is second-rate? It may be, as you say, that she 
found the weak spots in him, but who can make a 
building strong by plastering over the flaws? It 
may be that she found excuses for him, but what 
matters to us is that he took them, with open arms 
he took them, and fondled them, and decked himself 
with them rejoicing. Perhaps he really does believe 
that he is making money for his child: I don’t care 
whether he does or he doesn’t. The point is that he 
is making money and enjoying himself no end in the 
process. He’s happy, my dear Agatha, that’s the 
simple little fact that it all comes back to; I’ve 
watched him and I know it. He’s perfectly happy 
because he’s found his metier. She may enjoy her 
Monte Carlo and her furs, and her fashionable para¬ 
graphs, but so does he. By an extraordinary stroke 
of luck he did manage to marry the right woman: 
quite blindly he stumbled into the path that led to 
his own particular patch of reality, quite blindly she 
led him to it.” 

He broke off suddenly and stood as though wait¬ 
ing for her to speak, W she said nothing, only 


400 An Unknown Quantity 

looked at him with eyes vaguely troubled, faintly 
accusing. 

‘‘Three years ago, Agatha, I talked with him in 
this room the day that he told me of his approaching 
marriage, and I was far more troubled about him 
then than I am now. He imagined, at that time, that 
he could make the girl into something he half 
imagined he wanted, and if he could have done 
so I for one should have despaired. Success in 
that ambition would have kept him the prig he 
was and she would have become nothing but his 
shadow. You talked of her just now as a de¬ 
signing woman and as nothing more. She is de¬ 
signing and she is courageous. She designed 
for herself a life that she could understand, a life 
in which she could be happy—with him, nothing 
more. He offered her, in his blindness, the one thing 
she couldnT begin to comprehend, and she was brave 
enough to face the consequences of realising that 
truth. You think she forced him into her path; in 
reality she used no force at all. She merely led him 
to the road he was meant, by nature, to tread. Ho, 
for Heaven’s sake, stop thinking of him as sacri¬ 
ficed; see him, in however humble and common a 
way, as fulfilled. There may still be, I admit, a few 
shreds of unreality about him, but they’re the trim¬ 
mings of the foolish garments that I hope he will 
discard. At any rate, he’s nearer to feeling life at 
first hand now than he ever was before. His emo¬ 
tions, enjoyments, ambitions, are at least his own, 
instead of being the cast-off properties of others. 
Those wide, austere horizons at which he gazed from 
Swan Walk were yours, my dear, not his. She helped 
him to see himself as he really is, or, at least, as he 


An Unknown Quantity 401 

nearly is, and that, surely, is a great thing, the only 
thing that matters. They’re devoted to one another, 
have no doubt of it: face that one fact fairly and 
squarely and I don’t think you’ll find the other bal¬ 
ance of the scale worth a glance. What, after all, 
was his alternative? Not to be independent, not to 
be a channel for the molten ore of genius, but to 
guzzle the applause and chatter of cliques. 

‘‘Evelyn’s always lived under the influence of 
some one, first of his mother, then of Chelsea, now 
of his wife. He never could have stood alone. He’s 
always been blind, and he is incapable of guiding 
his own footsteps even with a clue, unless there’s 
some one to twitch the thread for him. In a sense 
he’s blind still, he always will be, and I fancy that 
even now he fancies that the quiver of the string is 
from the touch of his own fingers. Well, let him, by 
all means, think he made his own choice; what mat¬ 
ter so long as the choice was made ? He has touched 
his reality whoever has led him to it. Reality for all 
of us is different: his is this/^ 

The room was, by this time, almost dark, and from 
her chair Agatha could no longer see the speaker’s 
face save as a blur above the shadowy silhouette of 
his body against the evening sky. Out of the twi¬ 
light her voice came quietly. 

“I’ve never thought of him like that: you may be 
right, I don’t know, but she’s stolen him from his 
friends and I can’t forgive her that!” 

His answer came sharply. 

“Agatha, don’t make melodrama out of comedy! 
It’s for you to make your choice, not her, and you 
can’t shift the responsibility. Admit the truth of 
what he is, take him for that, decide that your aHec- 


402 An Unknown Quantity 

tion is real and deep and not just dictated by your 
vain imaginings, and you can have him still. If you 
keep up the old pretence and mourn the man who 
never really existed, then indeed you lose him, but 
he’s not ‘stolen.’ You liked her once, and I believe 
that she liked you; more, I believe she’s ready to like 
you again. It’s you who are complex, she sees that 
with the steady eyes of her simplicity, and just be¬ 
cause she’s simple the complex woman means to her 
the woman who schemes. I tell you again she’s 
frightened of you, frightened because she thinks you 
disapprove, because she dreads your interference; 
and he, well, he’s just a little bit ashamed.” 

“Ashamed!” she cried. “Then he does see how 
he’s fallen?” 

“Bosh! my dear, he’s ashamed because, like most 
men, he hates admitting that he’s different from the 
man he thought he was. He feels that his old friends 
will criticise and condemn.” 

His voice rose suddenly to a note of almost des¬ 
perate pleading. “Ah, take him for what he’s worth, 
help him to face his reality! ’ ’ 

The words seemed to swell and fill the shadowed 
room; from every corner whispered echoes came 
back. ‘ ‘ Help him, help him. ’ ’ For a long time there 
was silence between them, a silence that there, upon 
the house-top to which no sound of London rose, was 
like the silence of the sky. When, at length, Bever¬ 
ley spoke again there was a note of passion in his 
appeal. 

“Agatha,” he said, “you have made me do a thing 
to-night that I have never done before; you have 
made me preach a sermon, and I’m going to end it. 
Come here with me.” 


An Unknown Quantity 403 

She rose and let him lead her to the window at 
which, a while before, he had been standing. Below 
her as she looked, the darkness of London spread 
in a shapeless night, but overhead the sky was still 
glowing with reflections of the hidden light that 
gathered into streaks of red and gold behind the bar¬ 
rier of the distant hills. Here and there beneath 
them lamps broke the seeming infinity of blackness, 
and from some height, invisible in the gathering 
mist, a single rocket soared into the lingering bright¬ 
ness, burst and drifted downwards in a multitude of 
tiny stars. With arm outstretched he pointed to it. 

‘‘You spoke of tragedy,^’ he said, “there is only 
one tragedy for us, that we should fall like that into 
a fading littleness. What Evelyn does or leaves un¬ 
done, is nothing, but the judgment that we make is 
ourselves.’’ He let his arm fall to his side. “Little 
streets, little houses, little people,” he murmured. 
“It’s so easy, Agatha, so easy and so damnable: 
and I, my dear, am as little as any of them. Down 
there I sit and criticise, and chatter, and sneer, and 
feel superior, and all the time I’m an insect crawling 
in the sand with the great things towering up unscal¬ 
able. It’s only when I’m here that I see it all so 
clearly, and that’s w^hy I brought you here to talk 
of him. In the face of all that,” with a sweep of his 
arm he took in the whole of the vanishing panorama, 
“we’re so tiny that for very shame we can’t afford 
to make ourselves tinier still. It’s not so much what 
other people do to us that matters, as what they 
make us do to ourselves.” 

They stood together until the last flush of colour 
died out above the hills, and upon the darkness of 
the new-come night the glow of London cast a radi- 


404 An Unknown Quantity 

ance of fictitious dawn. A faint, chill wind from the 
east fluttered the curtains beside them and brought 
through the open window, from innumerable streets, 
the distant stir and rumble of the Town. They 
neither moved nor spoke, but he felt upon his arm 
her fingers tighten, and heard her faintly sigh. 


THE END 
















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